


A Shaky Beginning

by aces



Category: Secret Adventures of Jules Verne
Genre: Beginnings, yay team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-06
Updated: 2010-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-05 22:10:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aces/pseuds/aces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not so easy to get your feet back under you when you've got Phileas Fogg hovering around you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One:  Uphill Battle

**Author's Note:**

> I've never really liked the juxtaposition of "Victoria and the Giant Mole" and "Rockets of the Dead"...especially after seeing the deleted scenes in syndication in which Jules just really isn't having a very good day with _anyone_ concerned. 

            "No--_please_ not again..."

            He was lying in the exact center of the fairly narrow bed, the covers pulled tightly up to his chin, his eyes squeezed shut.  A bruise still stood out livid under his left eye--the one from the crowbar.  They were all surprised it hadn't broken his cheekbone.  The bruise Phileas Fogg had left under his right eye had thankfully disappeared by now.  He was moving restlessly in his sleep, as if struggling against rope bonds that held him down.

            "No," he sobbed, "please no. Why is this _happening_ to me?"

            "Jules?"  Phileas Fogg tentatively said the Frenchman's first name, reaching out an abortive hand toward the young man on the bed.  Verne gasped, flinched at the brush of cool fingers against sweat-soaked linen, and opened his eyes unseeingly.

            "Get away from me!" he yelled.

            Fogg dropped his hand.  "Verne--"

            The Frenchman looked around in blind terror.  "I'm _innocent_!  I didn't do it!" he hollered.

            Phileas felt his heart spasm, even if the cool expression on his face never wavered.  "Jules, it's alright, man.  It's over--"

            "Who the hell is he?!"

            "Let me, Phil," a soft voice said from behind Fogg's shoulder, and he looked around, surprised and angered to see his cousin in the room.  He hadn't heard her enter.

            "I can do this, Rebecca.  You don't think I can't handle a boy's nightmare?"

            "You _are_ the boy's nightmare," she told him with brutal honesty.  He looked away, scowling, only to find himself facing a Frenchman with tears running down his face.  But Jules wasn't struggling anymore; he'd exhausted himself with that tiny outburst.  A week after being rescued from the Mole, Verne was still too weak even to get out of bed.  Fogg was about ready to shoot himself.  They'd been traveling aimlessly over Europe in the _Aurora_, allowing Verne to stay in Fogg's bed while he recuperated; Rebecca was currently without any assignments so she'd elected to stay with them.  Phileas had a feeling she'd made sure she would be without an assignment for a while.  He wasn't sure whether to resent the implication or be grateful to her.

            "I can make this right," Fogg said through gritted teeth.

            "I think you will have to, Phileas, but it will take time," his cousin answered with that wisdom of hers that could be so galling when she decided to use it.  "And it won't happen today.  Let me stay with him a while, and see what I can do."

            Fogg didn't look up at her.  After a moment, he reached his hand up to blindly take hers and squeeze it tightly.  She handled the painfully crushing pressure with equanimity.              "Help him, then, Rebecca, since I can't," he said, releasing her hand and standing up.  He went to the door and paused before leaving.  "Please."

            She watched his elegant back disappear around the doorway, and then she turned back to the Parisian in the bed.  He had quietened again, exhausted himself completely, tears drying under his eyes and on his bruised cheek.  He was a boy, an innocent boy who'd gotten caught up in something over his head.  She felt desperately sorry for him--she was sure she'd never been that innocent.  She still couldn't quite forgive her cousin for what he'd done to Verne, even though she knew she would have done something equally despicable or purposefully cruel were she in Phileas's shoes and under orders from the Service in order to protect her queen.

            He hadn't even been under orders.  She shouldn't have shown him that drawing, shouldn't have involved him, but...he'd needed some distraction, more than the delights and possibilities that the _Aurora_ was giving him.

            "Do you all feel a need to guard me?"

            The quiet, bitter voice startled Rebecca out of her reverie and she realized she was still hovering over the bed, not having sat down yet.  Verne was awake, looking up at Rebecca coldly.  The arrogance in his eyes, in the tilt of his head, surprised her.

            "Of course not, Jules," she replied, sitting down on the edge of his bed.

            "Then why is it every time I wake up, Miss Fogg, I find at least one of the three of you standing over me or sitting in that chair?"

            "Because we're concerned about you," she replied calmly, "and we want you to get stronger.  And I believe I told you before you could call me Rebecca."

            "I've seen you before," he went on, still in that cold voice, ignoring her words.  "You were in the cafe a few weeks ago, long before this Mole business ever came up.  How long have you been watching me?  How long have you been supposing me of crimes I've never committed?!"

            She hadn't expected that.  She hadn't counted on him remembering her, hadn't thought that he'd recognized her from the cafe.  The only reason she had remembered him was because of his drawings.  She flinched.  How could any of them ever break through to him?  Did they even have the right to try?

            "Jules, listen to me."  She reached out a hand toward his, lying on top of the bedspread, but he snatched it away and glared at her.  She dropped her hand uselessly and for once found herself unsure where to look, how to respond.  She paused before going on, attempting to collect her thoughts.  "I know this probably means nothing to you, but...I'm sorry.  We are _all_ sorry, including Phileas."

            He continued to give her an unyielding, unblinking look.  She firmly held his gaze.  She wasn't going to let him shame her, wasn't going to let him control her that way.  She'd fought other people's control all her life.  But still she found the arrogance surprising—an unexpected streak in one so…harmless-seeming.  It was probably the only way he'd survived the entire ordeal he'd just been through.

            "I'm tired," he said at last, still in that awful, frigidly polite voice.  "If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to be by myself for once."

            Rebecca bit her lip.  None of them had been able to get through to him in the past few days, not even Passepartout, and the little valet had already started earning Jules's tentative trust even before Jules had been coerced into the Mole.

            He had every right to be angry, and afraid, and accusatory, and hurt--but Rebecca still wished he would be sensible and see they all felt awful for what had happened, and that he needed their protection now.  The people who had kidnapped him weren't going to let it end there, with their plans frustrated.  She wished he would trust them.

            She stood up.  "Very well, Jules.  Please...call if you need anything."

            "Thank you, Miss Fogg."

            She tried not to flinch again and turned away from him, deserting the room.

* * *

            _"I'm not sure I've ever met an innocent man in my life."_

            Jules whimpered, feeling the cold sting of metal pressed against his neck again, the ropes biting into his wrists, useless to do anything to save him and quickly losing circulation.  This man, this cold, angry, overbearing man kept threatening him until now he'd taken over Jules's nightmares and was starting to threaten Jules's sanity.

            _"Who the hell is he?!"_ Jules shouted aloud, his real voice merging with his dream voice in an odd echoing in his head.  He let out a sob of frustration.

            The soft, quick knock on the door to the bedroom Jules was borrowing startled him fully awake.  "Jules?" a worried female voice called through the wood.

            "Go away!" he yelled, wishing he could run to the door and lock it, but he didn't even have the strength yet for that.

            "Jules," Rebecca Fogg's voice accents turned insistent, "do you need help?"

            "NO!"

            "Very well," she sighed wearily.  "Passepartout will be round later with tea," she added before he heard the click of her heels stalking away from the door.  He sagged back into the pillows gratefully.  He had no energy; his body felt like a collection of bones and muscle very loosely held together by his skin.  And yet he'd give anything to be in his garret away from these people.

            Away from Phileas Fogg.

            It'd been a sweet rush in the Mole and afterwards, when Fogg had smiled at him and called him friend.  A relief, to be on the same side at last as this powerful, angry man, a relief to be able to place his trust in someone else because he couldn't even hold himself up with his own two feet.  But Jules's fears had come back all too soon, terrified at any moment that Fogg would turn on him, think again that Jules was his enemy.  And then the nightmares had started.  He couldn't even trust Passepartout, though he liked the other Frenchman.  He was an extension of Fogg.  As was the cousin Rebecca--and she'd already proven herself untrustworthy.  Yet, in some way, he did want to trust both the valet and the cousin, had an overwhelming need to find _some_one he could trust, and his options were rather limited.

            Jules closed his eyes in despair and tried not to start crying again, despising his weakness in all its levels.  He hadn't cried in years, hadn't felt so helpless in that long either.  He was completely at the mercy of these three violent, ruthless people.

            He saw again the sword swing toward him, whacking the ropes away from his arms, and flinched away as if it were happening all over again.  His hands gripped the edge of the blanket.  This couldn't go on.  He couldn't live his entire life in the grip of this paralyzing terror of one man.  Something would have to be done.


	2. Part Two: Recovery Period

            Passepartout knocked hesitantly on his master's door.

            "What?" barked the voice from within.

            "I am bringing you tea, Master Jules," the valet said hopefully.

            There was a long pause, long enough for Passepartout to worry that the writer had fallen asleep or worse, before there was an answer.  "Come in."

            Passepartout gratefully opened the door, balancing the tray easily with one hand.  He bustled across the room, setting the tray down next to Jules's bed on the edge of a dresser, before actually noticing the writer.

            The young man seemed to be imprisoned by the heavy blankets covering him, weighing him down, and that horrible bruise had yet to disappear, though it wasn't quite as obvious as it had been only yesterday.  His eyes were sunken, though Passepartout knew for a fact the writer spent much of his days sleeping--and dreaming.  Passepartout could always hear the young man's cries in his nightmares from the lab or the kitchens or anywhere else on the ship.  It hurt him to know Verne still couldn't trust his master.

            "Sitting up, Master Jules?" Passepartout asked expectantly.

            Verne looked up at him sourly for a moment before lifting himself with his arms.  They shook with the effort, but he managed it.  Passepartout hurriedly fluffed up the pillows behind the writer so he could prop himself up with them.  The student sagged back into them, a look of such severe depression on his face that Passepartout's worry increased.

            But he managed a bright smile for the other man as he settled the tray in Verne's lap and poured him a cup of strong, sweet tea.  Jules sipped from it--and then gave Passepartout a hesitant, tiny smile.

            Passepartout grinned back delightedly.  It was the first smile he'd received from the other Frenchman in days.  "Feeling better?" he asked hopefully.

            "A little, I think," Verne replied, setting the cup down.  "I--I can't go on like this, I realized."

            Passepartout cocked his head to one side in confusion.  He didn't want to lose this rare moment of trust and apparent openness from the young man; he would have to tread carefully.  "Liking what?" he asked.

            Verne had a set, determined look on his face.  For some reason it sent a shiver down Passepartout's spine.  "I can't--let--this--get to me."

            Passepartout held Jules's gaze seriously for a long moment, searching the young man's eyes.  "Fighting is good," he said in a voice almost entirely different from his usual one.  "Fighting for being healthy-ness.  But no need fighting Master Fogg."

            Verne flinched at the name, then slammed his fist on the bed.  The tray shook in his lap and Passepartout automatically steadied it with a hand without looking, his attention still focused on Verne's paled face.

            "Dammit," the young Frenchman swore.  "Damn _you_.  Damn all of you!"

            "You are being better," Passepartout told him calmly.  "You are being stronger.  Now is time you were thinking and realizing Master Fogg is your friend, not your enemy."

            "Tell _him_ that!"  Jules exclaimed furiously, staring at Passepartout with glassy hazel eyes.  He wore a nightshirt belonging to Fogg, too large on his smaller frame, too fine for what the poor student was used to.  "He is the one who held a sword to my neck and pointed a gun at my head.  And so did you," Jules viciously hissed at the valet.

            "He is the one who is saving your life," Passepartout corrected, refilling Verne's cup and suppressing his immediate guilty reaction and wish to apologize.  Apologizing wouldn't solve anything, even if Master Jules more than deserved it.  Apologies could wait; Jules needed help, reassurance, now.  "He is the one who offering you his home--his own room!--while you be getting better."

            Jules leant his head back and closed his eyes in frustration.  "None of you make _sense_!" he growled and opened his eyes to meet the valet's gaze again.  "How can I trust you? How can you expect me to trust any of you after what happened, Passepartout?"

            The valet held out the steaming cup of tea to the young man.  "You will see, Master Jules," he said with a certainty and confidence that would have seemed ludicrous in anyone else.  "You will see."

            Verne stared at the other Frenchman for a long moment, as if looking for the answers in Passepartout's face.  The valet held his gaze easily, trustingly.  At last Verne relaxed and took the cup, sipping from it.

            "Thank you," he said.

            Passepartout couldn't stop the grin that split his face in half.  The words were even better than the smile had been.  They weren't the forced polite words of a well brought up young man; they were sincerely offered.  He took the cup and tray out of the room without saying another word.

***

            Hopeful after Passepartout's apparent success, and after Verne appeared to be getting stronger at last, taking a painfully slow stroll around the top floor of the _Aurora_ once a day with Passepartout--Rebecca paid the writer another visit.  She'd been staying away for the most part, only visiting his room in the middle of the night when she was certain he'd be asleep, and gently persuading her cousin to do the same.  She was getting more and more worried about Phileas.  He'd taken to drinking copious amounts of alcohol yet again.  Verne was still having nightmares, impeding him from progressing as far as he could, she was sure.  She had to figure out a way to help them all--no one was useful this way, and there were always things that needed to be done.

            She slipped into the room and clicked the door softly shut behind her before turning around, leaning against the door and facing Verne.  "Hello Jules," she said quietly.

            He'd been reading; Passepartout had given him some books from Phileas's library, as well as somehow obtaining Verne's own law books to catch up on his studying.  Now his eyes moved up to stare at Rebecca, the rest of his body frozen, his head still turned down toward the book in his lap.

            She suddenly felt nervous, doubting herself and the wisdom of this idea.  Very few people could unnerve her so, and certainly no one so early in her acquaintance.  But there was something from this young man that demanded complete honesty, that he be given explanations, answers.  He demanded goodness out of you.  She didn't understand how Phileas could ever have thought this young man anything but an innocent.

            He shut the book with a loud, definitive clap.  "Miss Fogg," he said.

            The tension was broken.  She quickly regained her control and glided across the room, giving him a small smile.  "Rebecca," she reminded him gently.

            He followed her movements with wary eyes, shifting away slightly when she sat down on the edge of the bed.  She sat there calmly, making no other move toward him.  "You're looking much better now," she told him warmly, honestly.  The bruise was gone at last from beneath his eye, his skin was regaining its usual color, he was more alert and energetic.

            He hesitated, then nodded silently, setting the book aside and firmly folding his hands in his lap.  "May I do something for you?" he asked without looking up from the study of his hands.

            She searched his face, her eyes roving over his own, his nose and thinly drawn lips and forehead and dark hair.  "I was hoping simply to talk to you, Jules," she said.

            "About what?"  
            "Anything," she replied simply, hopefully.

            His eyes shot up to meet hers for an instant before refocusing downward. "I don't really feel like talking, Miss Fogg," he told her quite politely.

            "Don't you?" she replied lightly.  "You've hardly had anyone to converse with the past few weeks; surely you would like to talk with someone."

            "I'm fine," he said shortly.

            She blinked once.  "No," she replied, "you're not.  I thought you should know I was not in fact spying on you; you just happened to become involved in that mission--which I grant, did in a way lead to the Mole problem, but no matter what, you would undoubtedly have gotten involved there."  She paused, biting her lip unconsciously as she thought how to go about her next words.  Simplicity seemed best.  "What Phileas did to you was wrong.  What Passepartout did was wrong, but he was following his master's orders.  They have since made up for it, I feel, in a variety of ways."  She didn't know what she could say to get through to him--she didn't seem to be having any effect now--but she knew she must.  "Phileas isn't the evil one, Jules!  He _saved_ you!"

            "After beating me, tying me up, and holding various weapons to my head," Jules replied with a quiet intensity that made his voice vibrate.  "After which, I was forced into the Mole and was there tortured."

            "Yes," Rebecca replied just as tensely.  "And he feels wretched for it.  Haven't you learned to give people second chances, Jules?  Can't you learn?"

            Jules looked up at her, holding her gaze with hazel eyes that she suddenly noticed were the most beautiful, idealistic, trusting eyes she'd ever seen.  "How do I know it won't happen again?  The instant it appears I've done something wrong or suspicious or-or-or whatever!  How do I know it _won't happen again_?"

            "Because he knows you now," Rebecca replied quietly.  "_He_ trusts _you_.  Have you any idea how hard it is to earn his trust?  He trusted you with the queen's _life_\--have you any idea what that means?  With your own emperor's!  He and Passepartout took time away from making more of those devices that would warn the Mole was coming to make the other device that you invented so that they could _save_ _you_.  Does that mean nothing?"

            His gaze had shifted inward, becoming unfocused as she spoke.  She waited in silence, her heart beating in hope.  At least he was considering her words--it was an improvement.  Perhaps he could learn to forgive them.

            "I-I need to think," he said at last.  "About what you said, Rebecca.  I...need to think.  Do you mind?"

            She bit her lip, keeping ruthless control over her emotions.  "Of course," she said gently, rising from the bed.  "Take your time, Jules.  I will see you later?"  She lifted her voice at the end of the sentence, making it a question rather than a statement.  She didn't want to push her luck.

            He offered her a tiny smile.  He had a beautiful smile.  "I think I'd like that," he said.

            She smiled back.  "I'm glad," she told him frankly before slipping the door closed behind her.  She leant against it a moment, feeling an insane urge to sob.  She never cried.  But she'd gotten through to him.  She'd gotten through to him.

            Rebecca almost skipped down the hall to her own room.

***

            Rebecca had told Phileas of her conversation with Jules, and he noticed over the next few days that she spent more and more time with the writer, breaking his barriers down, earning his trust.  It wasn't hard for her to do--she was trained in that sort of thing, and Verne was most definitely inexperienced.  But even so, Fogg knew her charms and conversations were freely offered to the young man, with no more ulterior motive than to make him her friend.  And he knew Verne was fast becoming yet another one of her ardent admirers.  He only hoped the student was wise enough to realize she wouldn't need his protection, were he to try to give it to her.

            The writer was making a rapid recovery now, exploring more of the _Aurora_ until he came to know it almost as well as Passepartout, Phileas was half-alarmed to consider.  Of course, it only made things more awkward--once, Phileas had walked into the lab, expecting to find Passepartout and instead interrupting Verne in the middle of some experiment.

            "Oh-oh," the young man stuttered out, almost knocking the table with its contraption of levers and glass bottles over in his haste to back away from the Englishman.  "Uh, hello...Fogg."

            "Hello, Verne."  Fogg remained frozen in the doorway, watching the Frenchman.  Verne was tightly clenching a hand around a glass tube, his eyes staring down at it.  Fogg got the distinct impression the student wasn't actually seeing it.  He hesitated a scant second, searching desperately for something to say, before going on as lightly and unconcernedly as if he weren't feeling as awkward as Jules.  "I was looking for Passepartout.  Have you seen him?"

            "Uh...he just went downstairs.  To the kitchen, I think.  Yes, the kitchen."  Now Verne's eyes were flitting around the room, not daring to meet Fogg's.

            "Ah," Fogg said.  "Very good.  Thank you, Verne."

            "You're welcome."

            Fogg was too smooth to allow a long, oppressive pause.  He swung around immediately and left without looking back at the writer.  After that, he was always extremely careful to find out where Verne was on the ship before he went anywhere.

            It made things very difficult sometimes.  And he couldn't always manage to avoid running into Verne, though after that incident he made it a point never to allow Verne to see him, so as not to startle and embarrass the boy again.  One time he almost walked into the middle of some intense conversation between Verne and Rebecca, huddled together on the settee in the main room of the airship.  He hung back in the shadows, watching them--Jules's face was thin, animated, as he explained some invention or described some fancy to Fogg's cousin, using extravagant gestures and thoroughly lost in his narrative.  Rebecca's eyes were alight, a smile playing about her lips as she listened and watched the young Frenchman.  It made Fogg jealous--jealous of the already close relationship between his cousin and the writer...and jealous that his cousin could have that connection to the writer when he couldn't even be in the same room as the young man without terrifying him.

            He'd quickly turned around and left that time.

            Occasionally he would stealthily enter the lab in the middle of the night while Verne slept--he'd insisted on vacating Fogg's room, stating that it was unfair to use it when he was feeling so much better, even though Fogg still wasn't in any particular mood to sleep himself--and watch over the student for a few moments, make sure he was comfortably settled and sleeping peacefully.  They hardly ever heard cries from him in his dreams anymore.  Fogg knew that when it did happen Rebecca was always there to lull the boy to peacefulness with the soft warmth of her voice.  He didn't think she knew about his watching over Verne sometimes at night.  It wasn't something he would admit to to anyone.

            Things were improving.  And yet still Fogg hesitated about speaking to Verne.  He wasn't sure if it was for his own sake or Jules's.

***

            Rebecca started visiting Jules daily, talking with him, soothing him through the occasional nightmare that still overtook his sleep, strolling with him around the _Aurora_ when Passepartout was busy doing other things.  Though Passepartout was almost always near at hand, ready with some antic or language mangling to make the other Frenchman smile.  But the student always took the valet seriously.  It helped that Passepartout was in such admiration of Verne's agile mind.

            Even Phileas was a little hopeful.  He still avoided the young writer, Rebecca noted, but he was drinking less.  She gave up on holding her smugly superior satisfaction at bay, even if it made Phil more insufferable than usual in self-defense. 

            However, Chatsworth had a job for her.  The Duke Rimini had aroused the Service's suspicions long ago, but he was particularly suspect at the moment, especially after the violent death of Lord Pontefract and the loss of his rocket formula.  Rebecca was somehow to gain the duke's acquaintance, earn his trust, find out his plans and, of course, stop him.

            At the mention of the count's love of the theatre, Rebecca instantly thought of Jules Verne, still with them in the _Aurora_ though he was almost fully recovered and probably should have been back at the Sorbonne (on the one hand; on the other, Rebecca was unwilling to leave the student alone and defenseless in the middle of such a large city).  It was perfect--gain the writer a little recognition by getting one of his plays staged, and make him realize even more they really were on his side, all while accomplishing her mission.  Chatsworth already vaguely knew of Verne and his role in the Mole business; he didn't quite understand why the Foggs were taking such an interest in this youthful bohemian Frenchman, but so long as it didn't hinder--perhaps even help--Rebecca's work, he didn't really care.

            She brought the idea to Jules immediately after her meeting with the Service's leader.  He was surprisingly reluctant.

            "I don't really have anything ready for the stage at the moment," he said.  "At least...nothing that would suit you."  He was sitting at a little table on the lower level of the airship, the notebook he always seemed to have near him closed on the table.  He seemed to be blushing.

            Rebecca blinked.  "Suit me?  Jules, I'll play Mother Mary or something from one of your fanciful futures, I don't really care.  I just need an excuse to become acquainted with Duke Rimini."   

            He remained staring down at the cover of his notebook, not speaking.  Rebecca repressed a sigh and waited, knowing through the experience of the past few days that her own silence worked best to overcome his.  At last he started hesitantly, "I-I might have something..."

            "Yes?" she asked encouragingly.

            "It's something I actually wrote a while back," he said, at last meeting her eyes.  She smiled, as always enjoying his gaze--though she would never tell him that.  He was already entirely too shy around her.  "A play about--Joan of Arc.  I never tried to get it staged..."

            "Why not?" she couldn't resist asking in curiosity.

            His eyes gazed off in the distance over her shoulder.  "I never thought I could be happy with...whoever played Joan."  He looked at her again, and smiled shyly.  "But perhaps it will suit you."

            Rebecca found herself unaccountably flattered and pleased.  If she wasn't careful, this boy could make her thoroughly feminine.  "That sounds wonderful," she told him softly.  "Could you have it for me by tomorrow?  We need to get started on this mission as soon as possible."

            He nodded quickly.  "Of course, Rebecca; I have it right here, I'll just need to--rewrite it a little."  He stood up, the notebook in his hands.  "If you'll excuse me, I think I should get started on that right away."

            She looked up at him and returned his nod.  "Yes, please.  Someone will come for you when it's time for dinner."

            He offered her a quicksilver smile.  "Thank you," he said and walked away, his boots ringing on the stairs as he climbed them slowly.

            "You're involving him in another mission?" a quiet voice asked over Rebecca's shoulder.

            She swung around to look up at her cousin.  "It's absolutely perfect, don't you think?" she asked him calmly.  She hated it when he managed to sneak up on her.  "I get to the duke, and Jules gets to open a play in the West End of London."

            "Are you sure that's wise?"  Phileas was leaning against the wall, hands shoved into his trouser pockets, looking utterly relaxed.  Even his voice was light, unconcerned.  Rebecca knew better.  "He's barely recovered from the last 'mission' he was involved in."

            Rebecca stared up at him coldly.  "This will be nothing like that, and you know it.  There is absolutely no possibility of his becoming harmed this time.  He hardly has to be involved at all."

            "Isn't he already?  We know there are people after him; we know he is in some way...special.  And he's grown quite attached to you and Passepartout, you know."  His voice was increasing in intensity.  "I don't think we can _stop_ him being involved, Rebecca."

            She held her cousin's gaze.  "Then isn't it better he stay where we can watch over him, make sure no one else can try to spirit him away?  Isn't this the wisest course of action?" she asked quietly and reasonably.

            Something seemed to drain out of Phileas; he stood up straight but actually had a more relaxed air.  He adjusted his cuffs and the line of his frockcoat.  Rebecca watched the nervous mannerisms with a slight smile.  "I shall have to speak with him," he stated.  Only someone who knew him as well as she did could detect the hint of hesitation and uncertainty in his voice.

            The smile still on her face became sympathetic, if firm.  "Yes," she replied in gentle agreement, feeling rather sorry for him, "you shall."

            He nodded once, then turned on his heel and strode away.  Rebecca sighed deeply.  Things were certainly going to get interesting.  Again.


	3. Part Three:  Confrontation

            Jules sat at the table in the center of the laboratory, deep in thought.  His notebook lay opened before him; he had been working on revising the play for Rebecca, but his thoughts had wandered from the job, as they so often did.  For once he wasn't thinking about a new story or play idea, though.  He hadn't thought of writing at all since before getting caught up with the Mole business; revising this play was proving difficult...but helpful.  He felt like he could actually start writing again.  But for now, his thoughts were elsewhere--on Rebecca, on Passepartout, on Fogg.  Nothing new, really.

            The clearing of a throat behind him startled him out of his reverie, and Jules looked over his shoulder to see who had entered the room.  He managed not to jump when he saw Phileas Fogg waiting in the doorway.

            "Hello, Fogg," Jules stalled, turning away and inwardly scrabbling to gain control over his incipient panic.  It was so frustrating.  He had learned to enjoy Rebecca Fogg's company, had come to rely on Passepartout to bounce ideas off of and to generally discuss inventions and theories, and yet every time he caught a glimpse of the Englishman, all he could think of was rope bonds and cold metal.  He fought it--but he wasn't getting anywhere.

            The one time he'd spoken to Fogg in the past few days--simply telling the man where his valet had gone off to--had left him weak-kneed and thoroughly angry with himself--and Fogg, in a strangely reasonable/unreasonable blend.  He'd only become more irritated when he realized after that incident that Fogg had taken to avoiding him altogether.  He hated being so transparent.

            "I was hoping to speak with you, Verne," Fogg said, stepping further into the lab.  Verne resisted the urge to stand up, to back away, to hedge around the man and flee.

            "What about, Fogg?"  He felt so odd using Phileas's last name, without some title or salutation before it, but he was damned if he was going to put this arrogant Englishman on some level superior to him, even if only in address.  It was the principle of the thing, the Frenchman firmly told himself.

            "This upcoming mission of Rebecca's, in which she's apparently decided to involve you," Fogg replied, wandering ever closer to Verne.  He was taking his time about it, though, pacing a bit, not threatening Jules at all.  Jules kept tight rein of his instincts and emotions, something that had always been difficult for him to do.  "I'm rather worried about her."

            "Why?" Jules frowned, momentarily distracted by Phileas's words.  "She said it would be fairly simple."

            "For you, yes," Fogg replied, stepping around the table to face Verne.  Jules looked up at him, waiting for the rest of it, forgetting his own fears in his curiosity.  "All you have to do is give her an excuse to meet the duke.  She, however, has to get close to this duke, and I don't like it one bit."

            "Is he dangerous?"

            Fogg snorted.  "Of course he is, man.  Otherwise Chatsworth would never have assigned my cousin this mission.  She's also the only female agent the Service has, so this sort of mission wouldn't work without her."  He hesitated, then expelled a long breath of air, resting his hands on the table and leaning slightly forward, toward Verne.  "I trust Rebecca to take care of herself," he said.  "But she doesn't make it very easy."

            "Why are you telling me this?" Jules asked slowly.  It was very odd being--confided to, particularly by this man.

            Fogg straightened, adjusting his cuffs.  "I just wanted you to know more of the facts, Verne.  Now, I understand you'll be staying with us while Rebecca rehearses and stages this play."  He paused, then met Jules's eyes.  "Will you be willing to follow up...on anything that could possibly happen to her?"

            Jules hesitated, searching the other man's eyes, face, body language.  Fogg was expecting trouble, not the smooth mission Rebecca had implied it to be.  Perhaps it was just Fogg's paranoia, but after what Jules had been through lately, he somehow doubted that.  Fogg was trusting him with this, telling him these things when normally Fogg probably wouldn't overtly share his worries with anyone, not even his own cousin.

            He was trusting Jules.  And he was asking if Jules could trust him, could be in Fogg's presence without losing his head.

            Jules realized he hadn't been frightened at all in the past five minutes.  He'd been too caught up in what Fogg was telling him.  And now the man stood in front of him, straight and tall (incredibly tall, Jules noted with slight envy)...and yet Jules could swear he detected a hint of...nervousness?  hopefulness?...in the older man.  He was really concerned for Jules's answer.

            "Well, Verne?" Fogg broke into his thoughts, for once refraining from sounding impatient.  He was watching Verne closely.

            Jules briefly closed his eyes.  He had a very great respect and admiration for Rebecca Fogg.  She was an intelligent, beautiful, sympathetic woman, who listened to his ideas and his stories and took him _seriously_.  She was more refined, she was wiser, than any of the girls Jules knew in Paris, and she had such a great deal of experience in such a variety of things.

            He didn't want to see her hurt.  He knew there was probably absolutely nothing he could do to protect her--she was much more likely to protect him!--but he couldn't simply leave her in the lurch.  Nor could he do that to Passepartout.  And Phileas Fogg was asking him for his help, for his cooperation.  He'd already told himself he couldn't let this one man leave him in a paralysis of terror.  And he was managing in Fogg's company by himself pretty well so far, even if his heart was beating a trifle too fast.

            He committed himself.

            "I will do anything," he stated slowly, opening his eyes and meeting Fogg's gaze, "that will be required of me to do."  He lifted his chin, defiantly daring Fogg to question him on that assertion.  "Fair enough?"

            Fogg's lips quirked upward in a half-smile.  The smile changed the entire cast of his face; no longer did he appear haunted or angry.  He looked younger, more honest.  Jules felt as if he'd only just met the real Fogg in that smile, though he remained wary, instantly doubting whether he could hold himself to that rather general, blanket statement he'd just made.  "I'm very glad to hear it, Jules," Fogg told him frankly and turned, abruptly striding elegantly out of the room.

            Jules practically collapsed back onto his stool.  The encounter had left him emotionally drained, and yet he felt just a tiny bit better.  His fear had been faced.  It wasn't completely eradicated, and he certainly wasn't ready to completely forgive Fogg yet, but he felt he could face the man again.  On equal terms.

            Jules shook his head a little, his glance falling to his notebook.  He still had work to do.

***

            "Actually--actually?  When I wrote that line, I had in mind..."

            Rebecca sighed in exasperation as she watched Jules Verne run up again toward the stage from the back of the house where he'd been hovering, watching the proceedings.  She'd never expected it of him, but he was possibly one of the most interfering, obstinate men--writers--she'd ever met.  He insisted on coming to every rehearsal and would invariably interrupt, rushing forward in moments of discovery or indignation, drifting forward absently with a slight frown as he shuffled through his copy of the script, striding forward and awkwardly breaking through the flow, grinding the rehearsal to a halt, because something wasn't going quite the way he wanted it to.  He was never embarrassed about doing it, either.  That was the really galling thing.  He didn't see anything wrong whatsoever with correcting the actors' visions of his play.

            And why should he?  It was his play.  And perhaps it wasn't all that uncommon to have the writer of the play on hand when rehearsing, but dammit, Rebecca's patience was notoriously limited.  She'd dropped a few subtle, veiled hints to him, but sometimes, for being such an intelligent young person, he could be amazingly obtuse.  She would simply have to be blunt next time--but not till they were alone on the _Aurora_.  There was no need to embarrass him in front of everyone else.  She knew better than to make anyone lose face like that.

            And really, it was good to see him like this--like he normally was, she was sure.  So caught up in his artistic vision that he forgot the little niceties, like letting the actors run their own rehearsal.  She had no idea where he got all his energy from--practices could drag on well into the night, and he would still be just as wide awake and just as easily working through some complicated problem such as where the emphasis should be placed in a one-liner, while Rebecca would be ready to collapse into a heap.  He was in his element.

            The work, having something else to focus on, seemed to help him put past matters behind him.  Phileas must have at last talked to him, too; Jules could be in the same room him as now and, after the first few days, could act almost normally.  There would just be the occasional hesitancy, the merest change in the set of Verne's shoulders, the line of mouth and chin, when Phileas entered or left a room.  He'd gone from total fear around the man to an odd sort of defiance and bravado.  Rebecca noticed these things; it came in handy in her line of work.  But they were civil to each other at least, building up toward a mutual respect if not full trust, through a strange sort of complicated maneuvering not even Rebecca could fully follow.  In any case, things were improving.

            Well, most things.  Phileas was becoming more irritable, more irascible...more worried, Rebecca admitted dryly.  And it was rubbing off on Jules, who was becoming clumsier around her, always watching after her in concern.  But there was really nothing either of them could do about it--she had a mission, and she was going to finish it.  It was really quite simple.

            And it was also Opening Night.

***

            Once Jules got back into a rehearsal period, and was working with actors and other theatre people again, he found himself forgetting everything else.  It was wonderful, to be watching people working to put on his play--_his play!_  He loved to be in the middle of it, working out on the spot what was working and what wasn't, changing lines or reenvisioning how a scene should flow.  It was interesting too, to be working with British actors instead of French ones.  He was even a little bit disappointed when Opening Night came round--but not too much.

            Jules jogged up ahead of Fogg and Passepartout, with whom he had come for the first night of his show, to the marquee outside the theatre entrance, flicking off a piece of something disagreeable that was covering up part of the first "e" in his last name.  He stood up and adjusted his borrowed tuxedo uncomfortably--he never dressed up like this, and he felt slightly embarrassed to be in such finery. 

            "Well," Fogg said, coming up behind Verne, also arrayed in the requisite fancy dress, only it looked much more natural on him.  Passepartout was beside him in an absurd bowler hat, but was in such an excited mood for Jules that Jules couldn't even consider laughing at him.  "Here we are."  Fogg turned to his manservant.  "Passepartout, will you go and put the champagne on ice please?"

            "I will freeze it solid, master," Passepartout grinned in overflowing delight.

            "Thank you."  Fogg didn't sound quite as effusive as his valet, though the Englishman had given Jules a flickering smile upon joining him at the marquee, which was quite an expression of amiability and friendship coming from him.

            Passepartout grinned, putting a proud hand on Jules's shoulder, before skipping off to attend to the champagne.  Jules grinned after the little fellow before turning his triumphant beaming smile on Fogg.

            "You can wipe that smirk off your face, Verne," Fogg sounded grumpy, the words crisp and clearly enunciated in that upper-class accent of his.  "It's not a real first night. It's just a put-up job, to trap this fellow Rimini by offering up Rebecca."

            "I don't care who's behind it, Fogg," Jules retorted, standing himself at ease, reveling in the fact that he was standing next to a large sign proclaiming his name as the author of tonight's entertainment.  He was also secretly pleased with his being able to stand up to Fogg, to hold his ground--it had almost become a competition for him to be able to do that with the other man in the past couple weeks.  Perhaps it was the only way he could act in an effectively normal manner around the other man--he was still a bit leery of Fogg, though daily it became easier to be in his company.  "I'm opening a play on the West End of London," he threw a glance back at his sign fondly, "and that's all that matters."

            "I should think so," said the house manager, stepping up beside them.  He was a stuffy sort in Verne's opinion, though harmless. "Any play put on by the Rimini theatre commands the attention of the world."

            "Particularly the attention of Rimini," Fogg replied dryly.  Jules repressed a sigh--did the man always have to attempt to get on everyone's bad side?  He did such a marvelous job of succeeding at it.

            "The duke is one of Europe's greatest impresarios.  He's never missed an Opening Night at a single one of his theatres," the manager replied huffily.

            "He has more than one?" Jules was surprised to hear.

            "There's a Rimini theatre in every capital in Europe."  At that moment, a carriage arrived in front of the theatre, and the manager rushed forward to greet his Grace, the Duke Rimini.  Jules watched the man sadly as he obsequiously said his welcomes and chattered on about some bust of the duke's.  But the duke himself—a tall fellow with long, curling iron-grey hair—almost instantly caught Jules's attention; he somehow unnerved Verne, sending a shiver through the younger man's spine.  Rimini's eyes passed over Jules with barely a hint of recognition that Verne existed, but they stopped when they saw Fogg, and the two older men shared a long, unfathomable look.  An instant later, the duke broke the connection and sailed into the theatre, tagged along by the stuffy theatre manager.

            Jules was about to ask what that was all about--did Fogg know the man?--when they were approached by a heavy, middle-aged Englishman in evening dress and top hat.  The costume that looked so elegant and _right_ on Phileas Fogg looked somehow a bit shabby on this new man--and his cravat was coming undone.  "Fogg, a moment?" the newcomer said in pompous tones.

            Fogg hesitated, a trifle insolently Jules felt, before turning to Verne himself.  "Will you excuse me a minute, Verne?"

            Jules nodded once, taking his at ease position once again and greeting the theatre-comers, half his eye watching in amusement the conversation between Chatsworth--for he had seen this man before, at the occasional rehearsal, speaking to Rebecca in quietly tense and hushed tones--and Fogg.  At one point he noted Fogg stepping closer to Chatsworth, and he shivered, turning his attention quickly elsewhere and remembering that threatening invasion of personal space all too well.  Chatsworth looked up at Fogg coldly, giving him a smile that never reached his eyes, before heading into the theatre, as Jules saw out of the corner of his eye.  Verne moved to follow the other man, realizing it was almost time for the curtain to rise, but paused on the steps and turned back to Fogg when he realized the other man wasn't coming.  He stood instead still in the middle of the street, tall and angry. 

            "Come on, Fogg," Jules said, waiting an instant before heading inside.  He was too excited to wait or worry for the other man, all concern over what might happen to Rebecca after this performance deserting him at the thought that his play was about to open.  Fogg followed Verne backstage within a few moments--Jules had elected to stay there, rather than get a front row seat with Fogg or somewhere in the back with Passepartout--but Fogg almost immediately slipped off by himself.  Jules noticed him go, but didn't stop the older man--Fogg had been getting increasingly irascible of late; even Verne knew this meant he was worried, and Jules knew too he wanted to check on his cousin.  He discreetly left them to it.

            And nothing else mattered, anyway.  Not now, not when his own show was going up in the West End of London!  Jules was running around backstage, making sure everything was in its proper place, that everyone was ready.  He only occasionally paused to watch the actual play progressing onstage--but he had to watch Joan's great speech at the end of the third act--it was his favorite part, always had been—he'd been inspired when he wrote that—and even more so did he love it now that he'd seen Rebecca do it in rehearsal a number of times.

            He could hear her starting the speech, so he pushed his way to the front of the wing to listen and watch, his heart beating wildly.  She was alone onstage, glorious in her helmet and chain mail, the sword planted firmly before her.  He smiled softly to himself as he listened.

            "You see before you a woman, and you ask how I dare call myself a soldier," she looked around at her audience, as if they were all her soldiers.  She nodded, communicating with them, arresting their attention.  "And you're right to question me.  For mine is not the light that guides you through this darkness--I am the candle, not the flame."  A distant smile touched her face, and Jules soared on that holy aura that cast itself around her.  "But I know, men of France, just as I know that you are proud and true, that the light of Truth and Justice burns through me, and it will light our way to freedom."

            There was a light burning in her blue eyes as she spoke; Jules found himself reciting the words with her silently, and as she finished and the audience applauded wildly, she bowed to them slightly, turning to give Jules his own bow with her shining eyes, applauding _him_.  He couldn't help grinning back at her shyly, inordinately pleased with the compliment she'd given him.

            He was dragged into Fogg's carriage immediately after the performance was over, even before he could congratulate Rebecca on what a wonderful performance she gave.  He would have protested, so thoroughly caught up in the excitement was he, but the tension radiating off Fogg was palpable, and it suddenly leached away Jules's buoyant enthusiasm.  He had no right to be so excited when things could become so very dangerous.

            "Damn this murk," Fogg hissed after what seemed an age of tense silence between the two men.  He was staring fiercely out the carriage window, looking for any hint of a sign of Rebecca and the duke.

            "Don't worry, Fogg," Jules attempted to calm him, if only so he could calm himself.  He refrained from fidgeting in his seat with a great deal of difficulty.

            "Verne, I can't see a damn thing," Fogg retorted through his teeth. 

            "The Secret Service is on the job too," Jules continued to try to reassure him.  He wished Passepartout were with them, not on the _Aurora_ in preparation for--whatever.  The valet probably would have known how to calm his master.

            "Oh really?  And you think I'd let those incompetents look after--Rebecca," Fogg interrupted himself the instant a woman in hood and cloak and a man stepped out of the theatre.  (_Funny_, Jules thought to himself wryly, _I thought he couldn't see anything through this murk._)   "There she is."  They both watched a moment as the two newcomers lifted themselves into the duke's carriage and as the manager closed the door after them. "Driver," Fogg rapped smartly on the ceiling with his cane, "follow them."

            It took them a fair while to realize they weren't actually following Rebecca and Rimini--and when they did realize, it was entirely too late.  Fogg was livid, absolutely furious; Verne was breathing deeply, trying to stay calm and calm Fogg down, afraid of what the man might do in his rage and self-accusation.  This was the Fogg he had met that first night in his garret, the one who was entirely too dangerous for anyone's good--even the broody Fogg of the past couple weeks during Rebecca's rehearsals and before, when Jules was trying to get better, had been more bearable than this one.

            Fogg had made the driver stop the carriage while he sat in thought; Verne could practically see the steam coming out of his ears as he got a grip on himself and forced himself to quickly think through a logical course of action.  "We'll drop you off at the _Aurora_," he decided at last, not quite looking at Jules.  Jules was grateful for that; if he had to look into those cold, steely green eyes right now he would probably bolt in panic, even though he knew the rage in them wouldn't even be directed at him.  "I have just made myself an appointment with Sir Jonathan Chatsworth.  Driver!" he rapped unceremoniously at the ceiling again. 

            Jules sank back into the cushion gratefully, closing his eyes in the darkness.  He'd be away from Fogg soon; Fogg was getting a grip on himself, even though this cold air of calculation and repressed violence was too reminiscent of his first dealings with the Englishman to make him entirely comfortable around Phileas.  He could handle this.  He said he could handle this--he had _promised_\--and he would.  He _had_ to.  He couldn't let anything happen to Rebecca.  And he wasn't about to go back on his word now and lose face in front of Phileas Fogg.

            He tripped out of the carriage and watched it immediately jog off, barely giving him enough time to jump out of the way before it set off again for the Service's headquarters.  He pictured Fogg's face and shivered, grateful he wasn't Chatsworth about to meet up with that angry Englishman.

            Of course, Chatsworth probably wasn't the one who was going to be stuck with that angry Englishman for however long it took to find out what had happened to Rebecca.


	4. Part Four: Learning Experiences

            Phileas was back sooner from his meeting with Chatsworth than Jules would have expected, but Passepartout didn't seem surprised to see his master.  He merely asked expectantly, "Where we going, Master?"

            "Castle Gradowice," Fogg replied.  "I'll show you it on the maps."  He and his valet immediately headed to the front of the airship and were soon deep in an argument over the most direct route to this place.  Jules stared at them for an instant before deciding he didn't want to be left out.  At least Fogg seemed to be in better control of his temper at the moment.  And he really wanted to know what information Phileas had gotten about Rebecca—and how he'd obtained that information.

            "What happened?" he asked, joining them.

            "What?" Fogg spared him the merest glance.  "Oh, nothing in particular, Verne.  Chatsworth merely told me where it seemed most likely to find Rebecca.  Come on, we've no time to lose.  Passepartout!"  Passepartout nodded, scurrying around them both to get to the controls and set their destination.

            Jules couldn't get any more out of the Englishman, and he didn't want to try too hard and snap Fogg's already delicate control.  Phileas merely repeatedly told him to get some sleep while he could.  Finally out of irritation Jules agreed--Fogg, this cool and mocking and impervious, was insufferable.  But Jules had been finding out the past few days it was easier to deal with Phileas when he was angry with him than when he was afraid of him.

            Jules managed a few hours of sleep, but he was soon back on the main floor of the _Aurora_, leaning against the side of the airship controls and trying to contain his nervousness.  The sun was setting gloriously somewhere far above them, casting the clouds through which the airship flew in beautiful colors of reds and oranges and yellows, but Jules wasn't in the proper frame of mind to enjoy it.  "Look at these forests, Fogg," he said, looking out the window and downward worriedly.  "They're the breeding ground for myth and legend.  We're entering the dark center of Europe."  He was ashamed to find himself feeling so--superstitious.  He should have been past all that foolish nonsense.  But even though the sun was still cheerfully visible up here in the clouds, the forests floating by beneath them were gloomy and dark and brooding.  He felt as if they were angry at the airship and its occupants' intrusion.

            "It's not myth and legend I'm worried about; it's flesh and blood," Fogg replied, disdainful as always.  Jules repressed an irritated urge to roll his eyes. 

            "Sometimes myth swallows up flesh and blood, Master," Passepartout interrupted with his own views on the matter.  He was shaking something very odd looking--and smelling, for that matter--enthusiastically around the entirety of the airship, causing Jules to wrinkle his forehead in puzzlement--and at the smell.  Fogg was favoring his manservant with a look of aristocratic incredulity.  "Oh, I have heard terrible stories about these mountains!"  Passepartout went on, turning to Jules with wide-eyes and displaying all the fear that Jules was attempting to ignore in himself.

            "They're just stories, Passepartout," Jules told him with hidden relief, taking control of himself in order to reassure his friend.  It was always easier to dismiss someone else's fears than your own.  "Products of ignorance and isolation.  Once these people are educated, their superstitions will vanish away."  Verne said it with conviction, even though some annoying little voice at the back of his mind was reminding him of his own recent unreasonable uneasiness.

            "My grandmother," Passepartout argued, kissing his finger with a loud smacking noise (causing Fogg to delicately wince) and looking up to the heavens, "was wise woman, Jules.  She came from Rumania.  She knew of the _vampyra_."  Fogg looked down to give his manservant a jaundiced look; Passepartout returned the look earnestly.  Jules repressed the lop-sided smile that wanted to overtake his mouth.  "Creatures who do not die.  They live by night; they suck blood to feed their evil souls!"

            "Yes, yes, thank you Passepartout," Fogg attempted to cut him off, recognizing the signs of a Passepartout about to get highly excitable.

            "They sleep in coffins," the little manservant would not be put off, too caught up in the images parading across his vision, "talk to the bats.  Hold the mirror up before them, and they're not there!  And if you see one sleeping in his coffin, his fangs sticking out like this..." The valet gave them a graphic--and loud—demonstration of a vampire snoring in his sleep, startling Jules into twisting around to stare at the other Frenchman when he would have turned away.  Fogg's eyes were widened, as if he couldn't quite believe the spectacle his valet was making of himself, even though he should have been used to the valet's antics by now in their strange acquaintance.  Passepartout was still getting more and more excited.  "You must thrust a stake through his heart!  For only thus can he be killed!"

            "Would you kindly shut up?" practically burst out of Phileas.

            "Oh."  Passepartout came back to himself, and looked crestfallen.  "I'm sorry, Master.  I was only trying to keep you amused during this tedious journey," he added hopefully.

            "And singularly failing.  Go and iron the _Times_." 

            Jules gave Passepartout a sympathetic look--Fogg had no right to take his anger and frustration out on his servant, no matter how badly worried he was--but Jules also couldn't bring himself to interfere on the manservant's behalf, not quite ready yet to face that undirectable anger himself.  Passepartout, crushed, clicked his heels together and replied obediently, "Yes master," before walking away.  Jules turned back to the observation window, trying to banish his disappointment with himself for not sticking up for the valet.  He was fortunate in that at least--his attention was immediately caught by something else.

            "Look at this, Fogg," Jules urgently called over his shoulder.  Fogg set the controls to fly the ship by itself and joined him.  Jules glanced up at his companion, to make sure Fogg had seen it--though he couldn't see how anyone could have missed it. 

            "Ahh."  Fogg's tone brightened considerably.  "Well, according to the map, that's Gradowice Castle, though it does look as if no-one's lived there for centuries.  Passepartout!" his voice stridently crossed the main room; the valet came scurrying back. "Passepartout, take the wheel, would you?  And can you set us down by that meadow over there?  Well out of sight."

             Passepartout obediently started the _Aurora_ toward the ground; Jules glanced again at Fogg and saw the spark in the older man's green eyes, the alert readiness for action.  He almost seemed to be enjoying this.  In one way, it wasn't surprising—at last no more waiting; they could be doing something quite soon.  In another way, that welcoming of danger worried Jules.  He still couldn't quite trust the Englishman to remain on his side, not with that glint in his eyes.

***

            Fogg opened the door to the lowly tavern, having naturally taken point as soon as they got off the ship.  He was thoroughly and nattily dressed, from impeccable suit and gloves to top hat and his best cane, despite the long trek they'd had across the forest--if he was to meet up with this damned duke again, it would be on his own terms, under his own control.  "Hmm…"  There was no one there.  Phileas coughed, tapping his cane imperiously on the bar. "Service!  Hello?  Is anybody here?" He started searching the bottom floor of the inn for the owner, or at least someone to answer his questions.  Jules and Passepartout followed behind, also looking around in curiosity.  He kept his eye out for both of them out of habit.  "Landlord?"  Really, this was terrible service, he decided.

            "Yes, gentlemen!"  A little fat bald-headed man in a dirty apron stood behind the bar, polishing a tray with a rather disgusting looking cloth and smiling, acting for all the world as if he'd always been there and not just popped out of nowhere.  Passepartout started and whirled around.  Fogg repressed a sigh.  He only hoped his valet would be able to keep his wits about him long enough to follow orders if need be.  "How may I serve you?"

            "Ah," said Phileas, covering, and sat down at the nearest table to stall a bit longer as he thought of what to say.  The other two followed his lead, still looking around the room suspiciously.  "Good evening, landlord," he started ripping his gloves off, having already set his cane and hat neatly aside.  "May we have a jug of wine, please?  Some um, bread and cheese...Passepartout, would you like some fruit?"

            "Yes," Passepartout nodded after an instant of blankly staring at his master.  The nod was a trifle too exuberant for a simple affirmative reply.  His already exaggerated movements only really started bordering on caricature when he was truly frightened and/or worried.  Something else Fogg would have to account for in whatever plans he had to make.  
            "Could we have some fruit?" Phileas went on, dealing with one thing at a time.

            "Fruit!  Yes, we have fruit.  This is a very fruitful region," the strange little innkeeper laughed at his own joke.  His laugh grated on Fogg's nerves.  Everything at the moment grated on Fogg's nerves, it was true, but that annoying little giggle even more so than everything else.  "Are you coming from far, sirs?"

            "Yes, from--from, ah, from London," Fogg was distracted from the conversation by the various undesirable characters suddenly entering the room from a variety of both expected and unexpected directions.  "We're visiting Duke Rimini," he added, dragging his attention back to the innkeeper.

            "Ah! Indeed!  Well, are you friends of his?"  The little man continued eagerly as he stepped out from behind the bar to bring them their food and drink.

            "Uh...uh, yes," Jules roused himself nervously, at last joining the conversation--Fogg had already begun worrying about the younger man, as both he and Passepartout were both looking around in increasing uneasiness, and as the boy hadn't said a word since leaving the airship.  Once he'd started becoming comfortable around Fogg, he'd allowed his usual loquacity loose, as he'd already done around the other two.  It made Phileas oddly grateful--Verne was truly starting to trust him.  It was strange how important Fogg found it to have that trust.  But he'd seemed angry with Fogg since the night before--not surprising, considering the way Phileas had been acting, but it was the only way he could cope.  And if it meant snapping at the Frenchmen…well, Verne should bloody well understand what he was going through.  "Yes, he told us to look him up if we were ever in the...vicinity," Verne finished the sentence weakly, shaking his head a little.  He occasionally seemed to have difficulty with finishing his sentences--Fogg wondered if it was the different language, or simply that his thoughts had already moved onto something else and his mouth was yet to catch up.

            "But we're not exactly sure of his address," Fogg intervened, taking pity on the younger man.  He wanted to keep the innkeeper's attention on himself anyway, distract him away from the other two.  He wasn't entirely sure why he was taking so many precautions, but this place and these people made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.  And he trusted his instincts.

            "Ah, well," the landlord was chuckling again as he set the tray down on the table.  Fogg ignored his overly irritated reaction to that and looked around the room again.

            "Perhaps you could point it out," Jules held his map out to the innkeeper politely.

            "Ah, yes, I'd be happy to."  Then the man did something very odd, giving Fogg's manservant a strange look before looking around nervously and pointing a vague finger at Jules's precious map.  "He is there," he breathed in a thoroughly strange and thrilling voice before slipped away from the table.

            "What extraordinary behaviour," Fogg said, staring after the landlord in consternation.

            "Yes, indeed," Jules hissed in reply, stuffing the map back into his inside pocket.  "According to him, Duke Rimini built his hunting lodge in the middle of the Black Sea."

            Fogg would have answered, but his attention had been distracted by a strange noise.  Passepartout was holding the bread knife against his goblet, making the metal rattle.  He was also whimpering.  "Passepartout, are you alright?"

            "Stop that!" Jules snatched the knife away from the other Frenchman with a trifle more celerity than necessary.  Fogg decided Verne didn't realize how rattled he was by the atmosphere of this place, despite his attempts to maintain that he was an enlightened, intelligent, educated young man from the mid-nineteenth century.  The boy didn't want to trust his instincts.  Foolish.

            "What's the matter?" Fogg was concerned.  He knew that despite Passepartout's sometimes annoying antics he could trust the valet's instincts almost as much as his own.  The valet started making strange noises through his teeth, flapping his hands underneath his cheeks.  Fogg was thoroughly confused.  "Hmm?" he asked, looking around and seeing nothing to cause this particular strange behaviour of his servant's.  Jules started cutting the bread, perhaps needing something to distract his mind, then paused, looking deeply at his reflection in the knife.  Fogg hadn't pegged the student as one with that much vanity, but he was too distracted at the moment to comment upon it.

            "Do you see anything reflected here, Fogg?" Now it was Jules's turn to sound unsteady, with a decidedly peculiar look on his face.

            "Ah, no," Fogg replied disinterestedly, barely glancing at the knife.  Nothing strange was going on here, bar a few smelly peasants in need of better tailors and the annoying laughing innkeeper.  And that wasn't strange at all.  He was about ready to give up and dismiss it all as overworked nerves on all their parts.

            "Nobody?" Verne persisted, a trifle--insolently?  Mockingly?  In any case, Fogg didn't like his tone, as if the younger man found Fogg's intellect lacking, as if he found the older man...somehow inferior.  It'd happened a few times in the past couple weeks since coming to an understanding with Jules, not very often and perhaps most people wouldn't have detected the overtone, but Fogg was trained for subtleties.  It only added to his already heightened irritation.  He'd been simmering ever since the thrice-damned play had finished the night before.  He felt ready to explode.  But he knew better than to let anyone else see how he felt—Verne especially wouldn't hesitate to run away from him, and that could have disastrous consequences.

            So he took the knife away from Verne, coughing slightly to show he thought this was all complete foolishness and a waste of precious time.  Jules let him have it with a wave of his hands, as if absolving himself of any responsibility.  Fogg gave his reflection a throwaway glance, noting that his sideburns weren't yet in need of a trim--and then he looked again, and then turned to look behind him at the extremely bearded and pale-looking man he'd already known was sitting behind him, giving him the evil eye.  He looked at the knife again.  He set the knife down, exchanged an apologetic glance with Verne, who was looking just a tiny bit ready to be scared out of his wits, then cleared his throat again and leant forward to whisper in Passepartout's ear. "Passepartout."

            "Yes, master?" the valet replied nervously.

            "It appears I owe your grandmother an apology."

            Passepartout gulped wordlessly, making a little whimpering noise in the back of his throat, nodding convulsively in understanding and agreement.  "Well," Jules quavered, preparing to bolt out of his chair, "I, uh um, think we-we should be going."

            "Yes!" Passepartout agreed brightly, as if that were the best idea he'd heard all night.  He jumped out of his chair.  Verne followed suit.

            "Ahh!" the innkeeper stepped forward.  "There is no other accommodation, sirs.  Best stay here.  Let me show you a room upstairs, huh?"

            "Well," Fogg smiled and stood up grandly, thinking quickly, "That's, uh--that's awfully kind of you, but--um," he coughed again, looking at his fellow travelers as he with almost indecent haste picked up his gloves and hat, communicating with the other two.  He didn't like the look on Verne's face; he looked ready to relapse into the state he'd attained the first time he'd been on the _Aurora_ and in Phileas's precious care.  "We, we were thinking of taking a moonlight stroll."

            Passepartout and Jules nervously grinned, nodding in expansive agreement and rushing for the front door.  But suddenly the other patrons of the inn were surrounding them all, and the innkeeper was saying, "Ah, I would not advise that, sirs.  There's very unwholesome creatures prowling the valleys at night, sir."  He stepped ever closer to Fogg, with a confiding air about him that the Englishman found overwhelmingly repulsive.  "Wolves and such, you understand.  Let me show you some nice, comfortable rooms."

            "Yes, perhaps sleep would be best," Fogg gave his valet a warning glance, making sure out of the corner of his eye that Verne was still behind him and unharmed by any of these strange natives.  The writer was warily looking at the menacing natives surrounding them.  He seemed to be doing a fairly good job keeping a grip on himself, though.  Phileas was impressed, mildly grateful he wouldn't have to deal with anyone's hysteria.

            "Yes, wonderful...upstairs, to the right.  Your room is already prepared for you.  Take the candle at the table there, and I will be up directly to take good care of you, uh?"  They were being hustled toward the stairs by everyone, Fogg included, wanting to get the other two out of that sitatuation as soon as possible.  Jules was gesturing urgently up the stairs at Passepartout, wanting to get out of there just as much as Fogg.  Passepartout led the way with the candle, stuttering out a remarkably polite, "Thank you very much."

            "Good night," Jules called out, practically tripping over Passepartout's feet in his haste to get away.

            "Good night, and…" Fogg couldn't resist adding, just in case it might help, "God bless."

            "Good night!" the joyful little innkeeper called, adding something in a mutter to his fellow villagers that Fogg couldn't quite hear.  But the Englishman's mind was concerned with matters slightly more important than what he might have missed the landlord saying.

***

            "They are vampires, master," Passepartout rushed into the room, dropping his hat on the bed and pulling garlic out of it as if it were a magic trick.  Jules ignored him, instead looking around for something to slow the others down, because he knew they wouldn't simply let the travelers have a quiet night's sleep.  The dresser.  Focus on the dresser.  It would be useful.  "Give me a hand!" he shouted at the other Frenchman, his fear momentarily subsumed in the practicality of getting something done.  He was secretly and guiltily glad Fogg had been downstairs with them, in some way acting as a control over Jules's panic.  He could let the Englishman take over, figure out the big plan.  He could concentrate on the little details, one detail at a time.  It was easier that way.  He wouldn't have time to panic. 

            He wasn't _going_ to panic.  He kept telling himself that.

            Focus on the dresser.

            Fogg's attention was arrested by something outside, Jules noted amidst his urgent shifting of furniture.  The English aristo was so fixated he could suavely ignore the menial labor going on behind him.  "Look at the ruin," he called over to them; Jules and Passepartout jogged over to join him at the window.

            "It's coming alive!" Jules breathed, watching in horrified fascination as lights started coming up and other signs of habitation became visible.  The castle looked so innocent, as if nothing unusual were happening.  It only made the place seem more menacing.

            "That's where he's taken Rebecca, I know it," Fogg told him as he glanced at Jules with a serious glint to his eyes.  He was speaking to Jules as if the younger man were an equal, someone he'd worked with before many times in similar life and death situations.  Jules felt a confusing flicker of pride that quickly died at what he heard next.

            "My good sirs!" The innkeeper was calling through the door, "I've brought you some water bottles!"

            Verne's heart clenched, but Fogg was prepared, at least partially.  "Uhm, no thank you, landlord.  We're very--we're very--we're very, very comfortable."  Passepartout was nodding fervent agreement, as if he expected the innkeeper to be able to see him through the door and dresser.

            The landlord was saying something else; Fogg ignored him, leaning forward and urgently hissing in Passepartout's ear instead.  "Get the _Aurora_ and meet us at the castle.  Quickly!"  Passepartout nodded, his demeanor changing from exaggerated fear to purposeful commitment.  The change was astonishing but Jules didn't have time to consider it.  Fogg started ushering the valet without ceremony out the window even as he was yelling over his shoulder at the landlord.  "That's awfully good of you!  Um...feet like toast, very sleepy, see you in the morning!"  He practically pushed Verne out headfirst in his haste to get the younger man out.  Jules jumped out gladly, even as one part of his mind wondered absurdly whether Fogg even knew what words were coming out of his mouth.  Feet like toast?

            The fall was breathless and oddly hushed, the air crisp and startlingly cold.  The ground was soft, the grass not having been cut in ages.  Fogg was right behind him, pulling him up and pushing him forward when he would have taken a moment to catch his breath and consider what the hell he'd just done.  They started a mad dash through the fields and forest, smoothly and silently separating from Passepartout, and Jules's fear vanished suddenly and transiently in a fit of breathless excitement as he found himself recklessly enjoying this wild run across this wild environment.  A mere month, six weeks ago, he never would have considered he could be running through some dark countryside in the middle of Europe with a man whose introduction to him had been a punch in the face--and yet here he was.  It was absurd and frightening and strangely fascinating all at the same time.

            They reached the castle, and Jules's fears abruptly came crashing back into his mind as he incredulously watched Fogg raise a leg up the side of the castle wall.  "Follow me, Verne," the Englishman said, "and _don't_ look down."  He sounded so confident, so utterly trusting Verne could do this, that Jules found himself climbing the wall without complaint, even if it was a struggle.  Especially to avoid looking down.

            They reached the end of the wall, and Jules clambered over the side without any of Fogg's grace, but he was too busy being grateful he had made it to resent that failing.  Fogg was staring inside the nearest window in what looked like horror.  Jules quickly joined him, catching his breath--but then it deserted him immediately at what he saw.

            "My God!" Fogg whispered.  "We're too late.  She's joined them!"  Fogg couldn't seem to believe what he saw, despite what he had said; Verne had to look away in saddened disgust from the image of the lovely Rebecca in the arms of Duke Rimini.  It was obscene.  But then he looked back anyway, because he couldn't desert his hope, couldn't give up on Rebecca yet.  She had to be simply playing some sort of game to make the duke think she was on his side.  She _had _to.  Jules stole a glance at his companion and found his heart filled with pity for the cousin, who now had a numbed look on his handsome face.

            Jules looked again at the scene through the window and strained to catch every sight he could, trying to find some clue that things weren't what they appeared.  When the duke raised a gentle hand to stroke Rebecca's face and lean in to kiss her, Jules looked down, unable to bear it, and was startled by the sound of Fogg's harsh voice.

            "Just one shot, and I'll have the swine."  Jules twisted his neck to look at the older man and was frightened by the look of cold ruthlessness on his haunted face.  He raised a small gun Jules hadn't even known he was carrying and aimed it at the couple through the window.

            Jules was horrified.  "No, you'll shoot Rebecca!"  Unthinkingly, he threw himself at Fogg's arm, struggling to get the gun away from him--if he'd given himself time to consider it, he would have realized he was mad to do it.  Fogg ducked his arm away from Jules's grasp easily.

            "For God's sake, Verne," Fogg only sounded slightly distracted by Jules's interference, raising the gun again.  Verne looked on helplessly--he couldn't believe it.  He had been right about the English gentleman the first time after all.  He was a cruel, heartless, uncaring demon who was willing to kill his own _cousin_.

            Jules didn't know which was worse--to be in there, with that...thing that was the duke, or to be out on this ledge with a man who had no compunction about doing whatever he thought was necessary--even cold-blooded murder.


	5. Part Five:  Ups and Downs

            _I can't look_.

            The thought was cowardly.  But Jules ducked his head anyway.

            "Dammit," Fogg hissed, surprising Jules, and he raised his head hopefully.  A servant had interrupted the scene in front of them, blocking Fogg's line of sight.  Fogg dropped the gun but stared furiously, waiting.  Jules looked between the Englishman next to him and the couple inside, trying to ignore the emotions that surged in him at the sight of Rebecca leaning against the duke so easily, as if it were the most natural position in the world for her to be in.  The instant the servant disappeared from his view, Fogg raised his gun again.  Jules was ready to start shouting, not caring if they heard him inside, not caring if they were all caught and the mission was ruined, so long as no one was hurt, not even that damned duke--and then he heard guards yelling instead.  Outside, with running footsteps coming ever closer.  They had been found out even before he'd had a chance to do anything.  _Oh God, can this get any worse_? Jules asked himself frantically even as he turned to Phileas and said, "Come on Fogg, we have to get out of here!"

            "Without Rebecca, are you mad?"  The gun never wavered, even if the older man did glance at Jules quickly.

            "Just till sunrise," Verne's voice was insistent and harsh in reply.  "We're no use to her if we're dead."  He was thoroughly sick of this gentleman, thoroughly sick of his violent, out of control reactions to everything.

            "Dead, Verne?  Would to God that death were all we have to worry about!"  The passion in the plea to a higher power surprised Jules, but he didn't have time to worry about it; if he could just get out of here, force Fogg to run after him, perhaps he could save Rebecca from this madman—

            "Will you come _on_?!"

            It worked.  Jules rushed to the wall, his heart rejoicing when he heard Fogg's sigh of exasperation and footsteps come running behind him. Verne would have lost his balance and fallen over the side of the battlement if not for the Englishman's negligent grab of his arm.  They crawled over the side and down the thick stones a bit before scrambling into a window on a lower level that had been left open.  The two glanced hurriedly around the room they found themselves in before slipping out and heading down the corridor beyond the door.

            "I can't believe you were going to shoot your own cousin!" Jules strangled out as he stalked down the grand tapestried hallway.

            "That is no longer my cousin," Fogg stated stubbornly in reply.  "She has been taken over--"

            "So the only answer is death?!" Verne stopped in the middle of the hall, staring up at the older man furiously.  "The only thing you can do is shoot?  Is that your answer to everything?  The instant you even _think_ it poses a threat, you have to hurt it?!"  He was dimly aware that his voice was getting more and more out of his control, but he was beyond caring about that.

            They stood glaring at each other, both breathing hard from stress, the physical exertion of the past hour at least.  "_Don't_ presume to understand me, Verne," Phileas answered at last, clipping his words off with knifelike precision.  "And if you don't mind, I'd like to get out of this damned corridor.  I don't want to be found out by one of the duke's servants."

            He marched down the hall, forcing Jules to either follow or go off on his own.  For a mad moment, Jules considered doing just that, but then he reconsidered his options practically.  There was no way he could get away from this place without Fogg's help.  He would have to stick it out.  And anyway, perhaps somehow he could stop Fogg from doing anything...foolish.  He had no idea anyone could be so blasted reckless--but perhaps he should have known better with Phileas Fogg.

            They explored the wing of the castle in stormy silence, neither man quite yet willing to speak to the other.  At last, Fogg glanced at Jules and said "It must be getting close to light soon," he whispered.  "We haven't seen anyone prowling about lately."

            "And look at this place," Jules replied wonderingly, running a hand along the frame of a painting of some forbidding old woman in medieval dress.  It came away covered in grime and leaving a fingerprint in the thick layers of dust still on the portrait.  "It's...dead again."

            "Come on."  Fogg abruptly turned around, heading for the nearest room.  Jules threw his hands up in exasperation but followed.  There was nothing else he could do.

            Fogg ripped the covering away from a window to let sunlight into the room they had entered.  "So it's true," he said, leaning against the wall next to the sunlit window and soaking in the light.  Jules wilted in exhaustion and despondency (it had been a long time since sleep, and he hadn't been feeling up to par in a long time anyway) on the other side of the window.  "They do vanish when the sun rises."  Fogg leant over suddenly and breathed heavily, as if everything had just caught up with him.  Jules gave him a strange look, concerned despite himself.  It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps Fogg wasn't quite so sanguine about his planned actions as he'd appeared to be.  "That Rebecca should be condemned to a living death."

            At that, Jules looked up at him again quickly and answered tersely, "You don't know that."  Adrenaline, sparked by fear and resentment, surged through him again, making his fatigue disappear once more.

            Fogg walked over to the fireplace, ignoring Verne's words, perhaps in an effort to avoid another argument.  "How did Passepartout say you kill them?" 

            Jules frowned in wary bemusement.  "With a stake through the heart while they lie in their coffins, but--"

            "I know what I have to do," Fogg replied, fingering the poker he had picked up.

            "You could never hurt Rebecca," Jules's heart was beating as he realized again he couldn't let Fogg do this.  He might have to actually stop the man--_how in the _hell_ do I get into these situations?!_

            "That isn't Rebecca," was the cold, calm reply once more.

            "Yes it _is_ Rebecca!" Verne shouted with a traumatized look on his face, ignoring the warning bells in his mind that those vampires might not actually be sleeping at this very moment, that Fogg might just decide Jules's interference was suspicious.  He couldn't believe any of this was real; he was caught up in a nightmare, in the plot for one of his plays.  It simply could _not_ be real.

            "Some vile parasite has comandeered her body."  Jules looked on at the Englishman in horror.   Fogg actually looked regretful, for the first time since he'd started in on this mad plan.  Regretful but determined.  "And I can only free her by killing it."  He strode away; Verne followed in determined trepidation, looking at Phileas's back with the coldest, angriest look that had ever crossed his face.  He'd never despised someone so much in his life.  One thought was overwhelming in his mind.  _I hope that after all this is over I _never_ see you again._

           

***

            The door creaked open and there were two pairs of footsteps, one of which was definitely Phileas's--she'd know that boot heel anywhere--and that must be Verne, as it certainly didn't sound like Passepartout.  Oh God.  Verne.  Rebecca sunk further into her strange sleeping chamber, letting out a deep and silent breath.  _I promised nothing would happen this time.  I promised myself, and Jules, _and_ Phileas he would be safe.  That poor boy_...

            "My God!" Fogg's voice hissed in desolation over her.  "Undead!"

            Rebecca cracked one eyelid open; she's been dying to play a good trick on Phileas for ages.  Anyway, he deserved a bit of punishment, she firmly believed, for the way he'd been acting the past few weeks.  "Not entirely, Phileas."

            Both men draw back in unison--oh dear.  Poor Verne yet again.  Still, he appeared to be holding up well, even if he looked a bit shaken--and not just because of the scare she'd just given him.  He looked away, releasing a deep breath slowly.  "Rebecca?" Fogg breathed in disbelief, staring down at her with the most shocked look she'd seen on his face in a long time.

            She gave him a direct look, glancing sideways quickly to give Jules the tiniest smile she could afford, just to reassure him.  "I must say, you took your time getting here."  She sat up and noted with mild interest the poker aimed directly at her chest.  "And, um...what were you thinking of doing with that?" she asked her cousin lightly.

            Jules looked down at the weapon in the gentleman's hand, then glanced at Fogg's face with a decidedly peculiar look in his eyes that Rebecca didn't care for.  "This?" Phileas started to answer her, but Jules interrupted, placing a firm hand over the poker and forcing it downwards.

            "Just a precaution," the Frenchman stated with a nervous, delightful little smile aimed at her.  He snatched his hand away from the poker as if it burned him, and then held out the brown appendage when Rebecca raised her own for help out of the coffin--a much more gentlemanlike offer than Phileas offered, immediately holding the poker up to her neck again.  She took Verne's hand, stepping daintily and gracefully out and directly into the tip of the sharp instrument, holding Phileas's gaze the entire time.  She loved these dangerous little games they played, a sweet rush she couldn't get with anyone else, and she just knew Jules was watching behind them in absolute horror.  He still didn't understand them yet, didn't know their rules.  But he would learn.  She knew it.  She was determined he would.  "He hasn't..." Phileas said hoarsely, containing his voice and emotion with great effort she could tell, staring directly back at her.  "You're not..."

            "I am," she said, raising her chin regally, "unbitten."  She changed her tone and attitude, allowing it to become light and almost playful, in order to diffuse the tension that had been congealing in the room ever since these two had arrived.  "See?"  She raised her curls on both sides of her neck to show the lack of bite marks.

            "Oh God.  Thank God," Phileas dropped the poker, real relief on his face.  Rebecca grinned and laughed in reply, seeing with her peripheral vision the unrestrained smile flood Verne's face.  She noticed, intrigued, that he leant in closer to her as she shifted position.  She leant back against the coffin, instantly sobering.  "No, he wants me to give myself to him of my own free will."

            The look on Jules's face changed and he exclaimed in disgust, "He's a beast!"

            "He's a very attractive man," Rebecca instantly shot back at him, not about to take any sanctimonious naïveté from an innocent young man, no matter how sweet and intelligent he was.  He needed to learn things weren't always black and white, and they most certainly weren't always what they appeared.  His look of prim disbelief showed he wasn't yet ready to think about that, but any more argument from him was stopped by Phileas.

            "He is not a man, he's a mon--"

            "Shh! Shh shh," Rebecca instantly reminded him of where they were and who they could very well be surrounded by.  "I'm pretty sure they sleep during the day, but I wouldn't want to underestimate them."

            "Let's go back to the _Aurora_," Fogg almost begged.

            "Not until I find out what he's up to!" Rebecca retorted.

            "Don't be ridiculous, Rebecca," he put on that cajoling tone on her name that merely irritated her right now, "we're leaving."  He gestured with his head, communicating to her with his eyes, the only person in the world with whom she could do that.  But even he didn't understand.

            "Phileas, I've been entrusted with a mission."  _It's quite simple, you bloody fool_, she told him with her own eyes.  "And I'm not leaving until I've done it.  Now, you can either stay here and help me...or you can let me finish it on my own."

            "Fogg," Verne immediately added, obviously on Rebecca's side.  It also obviously irritated the hell out of the Englishman.  Rebecca gave him a cheeky smirk, even though one part of her mind busily wondered what the hell had been going on while she'd been…entertained…by the duke.  There was more tension between these two than there had been even in London.

            "Oh God..." Phileas groaned, throwing the poker out of his hand in a fit of pique as he turned around and went for the door.  Rebecca knew that would be the only physical reaction out of him.  He'd probably complain every chance he got, but he would go through with it because he was damned if he'd let her finish this alone.  She'd learned long ago not to resent his overprotectiveness.  For the most part anyway. 

            She overtook him quite cheerfully and led the other two to the room in which she'd spent much of her time with the duke, determined to find out how the devil that servant had appeared suddenly in the room with them the other night.  Jules and Phileas weren't averse to the plan; they thought they'd find Rimini's sleeping coffin.  She doubted it, but she didn't argue with them.  Anything to keep them focused--they both appeared set to constantly squabble with each other, judging by the snarky comments each had made while working their way from one end of the wing to the other.  And for once, it wasn't entirely Fogg's fault.  She had the feeling some of Jules's anger stemmed from the callous way he believed Phileas had been behaving, and probably some other part of it from his own stress.  But there was nothing she could do for him.  Only experience could help him learn.

            "Must be somewhere," Verne said when they entered the room, looking around at the giant cobwebs and thick layers of dust with a slight wrinkling of his brow in puzzlement.  She was sure he was trying to understand how this could happen when just last night the castle had appeared utterly normal and inhabited.  She didn't understand it herself.  She paid him no attention, though, looking at the wall instead, the objects along the wall, trying to find some secret catch to open a door. 

            "There _has_ to be a hidden door.  The first night I was here one of them walked straight through this wall," she told the others, dimly aware of where they were situated in relation to herself in the room.

            "You know," Phileas said in such a tone that he roused her from what she was doing, "not only is this chap a vampire, he's also a raging egomaniac."  Phileas had opened one of the cabinet doors and was leaning against it in his elegantly posed way.  Jules was immediately interested and went over to investigate.  Rebecca smiled, grateful he was still capable of that insatiable curiosity at least, and turned away to investigate some more.

            The whirring, whining sound distracted her, and she turned around to find Jules playing with a part of the statue he'd taken out of the cabinet, Phileas looking on in another of his insufferably relaxed-while-tense poses.  She answered Verne's questions, explaining Rimini's plan.  He was shocked and dismayed, of course--he was so _very _young and naïve--and even Phileas was mildly surprised.  She went back to her wall, certain she was almost there--ah!  Yes, there was the perfect thing to hide a trip for a hidden door, an ugly little wall decoration.  She turned back to give Phileas a bright grin after she opened the secret entrance.  When she entered the doorway, she paused only long enough to look back again and ask, "Shall we?"

            Fogg waved a magnanimous hand.  "After you," he said lightly and Verne, apparently forgetting for the moment his argument with Phileas, grinned with the other two.  Rebecca slipped lightly into the secret staircase, leading the other two down its slimy, dripping corridor. 

            What they saw at the end of it was incredible.  A strange sort of laboratory, vampires lying down on cots around the edges of the room.  It was vile.  Even Phileas looked unnerved.  Rebecca headed for the lab equipment while her cousin went to the other side of the room to get a closer look at one of the vampires, apparently.  She looked warily at the undead man lying unconscious to her side and picked up a small rocket, sniffing the explosive mixture inside.

            "Rockets?"  Verne had naturally followed her—he would be interested in the lab equipment—and looked at what she held.  She held her finger out to him so that he could see the compound on it, nodding.  They continued their discussion, Rebecca filling in the new pieces of information for her own sake that she'd just gained from Phileas as they explored the castle.  And then Phileas distracted them both by his soft exclamation--and they saw the entire damn army of vampires lying in that vast cavern beyond the laboratory.  It was horrifying.  But Rebecca wasn't one to let horror easily overwhelm her.

            The men rushed off to get a closer look at the vampires, and Rebecca was about to follow when a cold wind seemed to rush up her back and--she knew he was there.  Rimini.  She'd firmly been trying to keep him out of her mind for the past hour or more, ever since Phileas and Jules had entered her room.  She immediately schooled her expression into one of welcome, gliding up to him with as seductive a look as she could manage while still maintaining at least some of her dignity.  She played up to him in exactly the way he wanted, ignoring the niggling little worry that it was really quite too easy to play this role.  She managed to stop him before he kissed her however, not at all trusting her cousin to react to that sight in a sensible manner—or Jules, for that matter, in his current apparently reckless mood.  She'd been keeping track of the time; Rimini was up; obviously the sun was falling and they were out of time, and she had to get the duke out of there as soon as possible, let the other two get away.  She invented the quite truthful excuse of feeling a little shy in public (in this public in any case), and he, in his Old World gentlemanly way, led her out of the laboratory.

            She only hoped Jules and Phileas could behave civilly around each other long enough for her to fix everything.


	6. Part Six (Finale):  Resolutions...?

            Fogg watched his cousin disappear from the underground laboratory with the duke, and could do nothing.  This helpless feeling had come over him many times before, not always in his Service career (_he remembered watching Rebecca and Erasmus dangling from a tree in the orchard, clenching his hands and his teeth against moving or speaking_), and he still found it the most galling, frustrating experience of his life.  Throughout this entire mission he'd been feeling particularly helpless and out of control of the situation.  And now here he was, stuck in a cavern with a boy angry at him and hundreds of vampires about to wake up.

            It was enough to make a gentleman swear.

            "Come on, Verne," Fogg grabbed the student's forearm with little ceremony, pulling him into the darkest corner he could find of the echoing cavern.  At least the vampires liked dim lighting.  If they could just manage not to be noticed by these vile creatures, perhaps they could slip out when the vile creatures were otherwise occupied.  As plans went, it was abominable, but there really wasn't much else Phileas could do; he had to get Rebecca back somehow.  He glanced at Jules and saw a set look on the young man's face—and this somehow made him feel a little better.  He could count on the little Frenchman to back him up, at least until this entire ugly mess was over.

            "Look around," Fogg mouthed to his companion, barely giving the words any sound.  "See what you can find."  The writer nodded and melted further into the corner, down a previously unseen short corridor into another part of the cavern.  Fogg was impressed by the lad's skill in obliterating himself from view.  An instant later, Verne reappeared and tugged at Fogg's coat sleeve excitedly.  Fogg allowed this indignity and followed the younger man.

            He pointed triumphantly at the neat piles of cloaks, top hats, and strange boots with gadgets on the sides—those must be what made the vampires fly.  The exact things that set of vampires mere feet away from them were wearing, in fact.  The smirk on Verne's face was possibly bigger than the one he'd worn before his Opening Night not all that long ago.  However, Fogg couldn't find it in him to put the boy down this time. 

            "Fantastic," he whispered to Jules, quickly picking up the nearest sartorial accessories and putting them on over his clothes.  Thankfully the cloak was so voluminous it covered his own, now quite grimy, clothes.  Verne immediately followed his lead and looked utterly absurd in the top hat.  Again, Fogg magnanimously decided against mentioning this.

            He was about to slide back into the main part of the cavern, to join the vampires and attempt to act like he belonged there, when Verne again pulled at his arm.  Phileas turned back to the younger man impatiently.  Couldn't the blighted fool see how important it was to hurry?  Before anything happened to Rebecca?  Before that damnable duke could go through with his plans?

            Verne held something up, dangling it in his hand as if he were attempting to entice Phileas with it.  Fogg squinted in the extremely dim light and abruptly realized it was the piece of the duke's statue that the writer had taken.  He looked into Verne's face, and the student gave him a long, meaningful look.  A slow, calculating smile crossed the Englishman's visage, and he nodded understandingly.  Jules nodded back, the look of cold ruthlessness on his face oddly mirroring Fogg's arrogantly determined expression.  Phileas gave the younger man another long, considering look.  What had he done to this boy?

            He didn't have time to dwell on that particular matter.  When they peeked back into the main cavern, they found the vampires all up and moving into positions to form two long, rigid lines.  The two men didn't even have to look at each other to smoothly join the undead creatures, standing next to each other in formation.  Fogg could practically feel the tension quivering through the Frenchman's body standing stiffly next to him.  He wasn't sure he was in much better control of himself, come to think of it.

            A few minutes later, apparently at some unseen and unheard signal, the lines of vampires started marching.  Fogg and Verne followed suit, weaving their way out of the cavern and eventually out into the front courtyard of the menacing old castle.  As the many boots clacked across the stones, the two still living humans broke away from the rest.  Verne ducked under the duke's carriage, the device from Rimini's statue in his deft hands being connected to the underside of the carriage.  Fogg crouched down beside him, darting looks everywhere and occasionally glancing back down without comprehension to check on what the writer was doing.

            "I've set the timer for 30 minutes," Jules told him in a whisper.  "That should deflect them from where they're going."  The sonic device would lead the army of vampires to the duke's carriage, wherever it may be, rather than to any of the capital cities the vampires were supposed to attack.  Fogg had to admit he probably wouldn't have thought to have done that himself, nor would he have known how to do it in the first place, though Passepartout might have been able to, were he with Fogg in Verne's place.  Fogg only hoped his manservant had made it to the _Aurora_\--though he did wish he knew where the devil the _Aurora_ and his manservant had gotten to.

            Fogg watched the writer with unexpected talents fiddle and practically jumped out of his skin when he heard a distant voice call out from the doors of the castle, "Bring the carriage to the entrance!"

            He looked around, saw the coachman and footman jogging toward them, and breathed out, "Oh no."  The gentleman glanced down at Verne again and strangled out, "Come on, Verne, for God's sake, hurry up."

            Verne ignored him, finishing his work before they both dodged away from the carriage and hid behind a wall as the carriage now trundled up to the main entrance.  Both men watched for what would happen next, while Jules put his top hat back on with a bit of difficulty (Fogg refrained from telling the writer he really needn't bother). Rebecca and the duke regally descended the staircase behind an entourage of soldiers and climbed aboard the carriage.

            Rebecca.  Not this, on top of everything else that had happened so far--this was the worst mission Phileas had ever been on, even if he wasn't technically on this one (and he wasn't about to admit that that was a largish part of his problem with this mission), and when and if he ever got back to London, he would personally slug Chatsworth a couple more times for sending them all into this hellish--

            Phileas started forward, an instinctual move, and was surprised to find himself pulled back by Jules's firm hold.  "Wait!  What are you doing don't be ridiculous!"  The boy didn't even pause between the sentences; he'd apparently learned to spit everything out quickly around the quick-witted and quick-footed Fogg; he didn't even wait to listen when Fogg gently said his name.  "There's no way we can take them all on!"

            "Listen to me, Verne."  Fogg wasn't going to make the mistake again of not explaining.  If he explained things, Jules might listen and might help rather than fight him.  And he admitted, if only to himself, that he needed help.  "We have to do something.   If we don't get her out of that carriage, she is going to die."

            There was a loud sound, the _clop clop_ of horse hooves; Fogg and Verne looked up and silently watched the carriage depart.  Fogg lowered his head, numb.  He had failed his cousin.  He didn't even have his father or Chatsworth or anyone else to blame for this death; he had only himself.  He had failed.

            And then Jules suddenly almost yelled in excitement, pulling at the Englishman's cloak once more.  It was becoming quite an irritating habit of the young man's.  "Fogg Fogg Fogg!  The _Aurora!_"  He was pointing upward at a dark shape whirring in flight above them.

            "Excellent."  The word was heartfelt.  Fogg felt like he could breathe once again.  There was hope after all.  The _Aurora_ was faster than any horse-drawn carriage, after all; he could easily catch up with it, rescue Rebecca, and still give the duke the fate he deserved.  "Follow me, Verne.  Come on."

            Both strode out to the center of the courtyard, looking around furtively, even though the area was now completely and eerily deserted.  Fogg turned back to his companion.  "Verne, d'you have any idea how these rockets work?"

            Verne looked down reflexively at his feet.  "I believe you put your ankle electrodes together," he answered after a moment's thought, a frown of concentration on his face.

            "Shall we?"

            Verne nodded; they clicked their heels together and were abruptly lifted into the air.  Fogg found the uncontrolled movement disorienting, but judging from the grin on Verne's face he was inordinately pleased with the cold and fast flight.  They ascended onto the top of the _Aurora_ and crawled into the top floor.  Fogg held up a hand to silence Jules before the younger man could make any enthusiastic comments; the Englishman could hear voices below.  Jules watched Fogg, waiting for the older man to tell him what to do--Fogg was gratified and relieved, hoping this current strain of obedience might mean that Verne would at last stop mistrusting his motives.  But this was still not the time to worry about that.  He led the way downstairs and found Passepartout being threatened by that damned, insufferable, giggling little _ass_ of an innkeeper.

            Fogg was not amused.

            "Unhand," he said, his temper finally fraying completely with the strain it had been under for many weeks, "my valet."

***

            Verne heard the anger in Fogg's voice and thoroughly agreed with it.  After everything that had happened in the past--day?  Two days?  Time lost its meaning completely in these situations, as he was to his resignation finding out--he was thoroughly sick of this damned situation, this damned country, and these damned people.  He wanted an _end_.

            He marched over to the side of the room and slid the sword out of its holder, the stinging sound of the metal sending an unpleasant shiver of memory down his back.  But he was utterly determined.  They were going to put an _end_ to this, once and for all.  No more.  He turned and held the sword out to the Englishman in an almost ceremonial gesture.  "Fogg?" he asked, the word almost as clipped as Fogg would have made it.

            "Thank you, Verne," Fogg's voice was hoarse; Verne was almost completely out of Fogg's thoughts, the Frenchman knew, but at this moment he didn't resent that feeling of insignificance.  How dare anyone defile the _Aurora_ like this?  And how dare they hurt Passepartout?  "Go and find something long, wooden, and pointed, would you."  Jules nodded, starting away, but he heard Fogg continue as he left, "Passepartout...would you be so kind as to open the doors?  Our grotesquely enameled brethren...are leaving."

            Passepartout gladly obeyed his master's orders, and Jules came back with a couple sharpened pieces of wood Passepartout had had lying around in the lab for some obscure reason fathomable only to himself.  Verne handed the pieces to Fogg, who then handed one to Passepartout--and they both, with silent agreement, each chose one vampire to stab in the heart with the stake.  Jules turned away, sickened.  The look on Passepartout's face was cold and determined, his clownish mask once again slipping completely away.  Fogg had just as determined a look on his face...but he actually appeared slightly regretful--no, not regretful, but there was some distance in his face that showed he didn't actually enjoy this task, only did it because it must be done.  Jules didn't know how to take that.  He didn't know how to take anything anymore.  The sudden and almost anti-climactic resolution to this particular crisis, if not to the entire adventure, suddenly made Jules feel very tired, all the adrenaline leaching out of his body and leaving him weak-kneed.  But he still didn't have time to consider anything, not yet.  There were still things that needed to be done.  There was still Rebecca to save.

            The two the others had staked had disappeared instantly in a fine cloud of dust.   All three pushed the rest of the vampires out of the doors that Passepartout had opened.  After that, Fogg was calling for Passepartout to guide the ship after the carriage, hurrying the valet and Jules along with frantic impatience.  They found the carriage quickly, and Fogg was lowered out of the _Aurora_.  Jules watched over the side of the ship, his brain momentarily blessedly numbed, and saw Rebecca join Fogg on the little wooden platform after an oddly lengthy pause.  He turned around a minute later to watch Passepartout raise the cousins up to the ship and watched silently as they both stepped onto the _Aurora _proper.  He wanted to ask Rebecca how she felt, wanted to throw every swearword he could think of--both English and French--at Fogg, more out of pure reaction than anything else, wanted to tell Passepartout to send him right back to Paris...but he didn't say anything.  He couldn't say anything.

            No-one else spoke either.  There seemed to be something curious in the atmosphere that constricted speech.  Jules walked forward; he wasn't quite sure why, but he had an insane and completely out-of-line urge to take Rebecca's hand in his own.  She swept past him to the observation window, staring outside blindly.  Jules turned to her back sadly and in confusion, remembering certain things she'd said earlier in the castle, before they'd been separated.  Perhaps she really had cared for this Rimini, incredible as it seemed to Jules's sometimes remarkably straightforward mind. 

            Passepartout went back to the airship controls, and Fogg slowly joined him, standing opposite Jules.  At last he whispered, "Verne," and gestured with his head to Rebecca, an almost pleading look in his eyes.  Verne shut his eyes briefly--had he any right to speak up?--but he stepped forward. 

            "I never had a chance to tell you...Rebecca, what a wonderful performance you gave in my play."  She nodded, smiled, but refused to meet his eye, and kept fidgeting, one finger relentlessly poking into the palm of her other hand.  She was intent on the action; he recognized that it was her way of holding back some great emotion.  He thinned his lips, nodded once sadly to himself, confirming that indeed he had no right to interfere, and turned away. 

            He paused when he would have walked completely away, and watched Fogg replace him, standing close behind Rebecca and whispering gently to her.  He saw the hand Fogg raised to Rebecca's shoulder, saw the arrested movement at the cold tone in Rebecca's voice that told the Englishman she did not want his sympathy or pity, the door slammed in her cousin's face, and listened as Fogg raised his head and dropped the hand, holding back some emotion of his own while saying, "Passepartout?  Will you set a course for home?"

            "With the greatest of pleasure, Master," Passepartout replied sadly.

            Jules frowned to himself as he walked slowly to the other end of the room, sitting down on the small but comfortable couch he found there.  It was over.  It was really over.  Now, how could he delicately suggest that he wanted to go back to _his _home?

* * *

            The sunrise the next morning was glorious, especially when viewed from the deck of the _Aurora_.

            Jules stood outside, despite the cold wind that threatened to sever his head from his body, drinking in the oranges and reds and pinks and yellows of the sun rising through the thick white clouds.  He thirsted for light.  He felt as if he'd been denied water while stumbling through a desert of confusing darkness.

            They had all gone to bed soon after that stilted conversation the night before, only Jules doubted anyone had actually slept very well.  He certainly hadn't, despite the physical exhaustion that was still overwhelming him after not sleeping at all for the past two days.  They were taking their time going back to London, this time; no one was in a hurry to speak with Sir Jonathan Chatsworth. 

            Jules wanted to go home.

            He'd never thought he would miss boring lectures and getting drunk on cheap wine with his friends in the cafes, but this…this was too much.  He wasn't sure of anything anymore, and he didn't think he could ever feel safe anymore.  Even those strange visions he sometimes had were better than this mad way of living.

            And he was still angry with Phileas Fogg.

            Well, perhaps not angry.  Well, _yes_, very decidedly angry.  Well…

            That was certainly part of his current frustration.

            He _was_ angry with Fogg.  Decidedly, righteously angry with the elitist English gentleman.  Once again, Fogg had displayed his ruthless disregard for human life by being prepared to kill his own cousin, just as he'd been prepared to hurt Jules simply because of a suspicion.

            But Rebecca hadn't seen it that way.

            He'd watched them in that room, after they found her in the coffin.  She'd _enjoyed_ that encounter with her cousin, enjoyed playing with him, exacerbating his fears (and Jules's for that matter) before proving that she was still herself.  She'd walked straight into that poker, completely unafraid of what her cousin could do to her.  And when she'd shown she was still, without a doubt, Rebecca Fogg, a look of such profound relief had surged across Fogg's face that Jules had been utterly shocked.  How could he equate those two states of mind with each other? They were utterly incompatible.

            But then, Phileas Fogg—oh hell, all three of them—did seem to have a knack for putting the thoroughly incompatible together quite easily.

            Jules leant against the deck railing, closing his eyes and sighing deeply.  Life was, at this moment, entirely too confusing for him to comprehend. 

            He simply didn't want to think anymore.  He wanted to be left alone, to write his plays and study his law books.  He never wanted to be bothered with sword-carrying Englishmen and gun-waving Frenchmen and nightdress-wearing Englishwomen again.  It hurt too much.

            "I hope you're not considering jumping," a cool voice said behind him.

            Jules whirled around.  He'd thought he was the only one up and about already; even Passepartout hadn't put in an appearance yet, he was sure.  And yet here was Fogg, once again sneaking up on him and startling him.  Jules really wished the older man would stop doing that.

            "Of course not," he snapped.  "If I wanted to die, I'd just ask you to do it for me.  I'm sure you could come up with something creative."

            Even Jules was surprised by the vehemence in his voice, and he turned quickly back to the sunrise, trying to find that peaceful feeling he had had for a fleeting instant when he'd first seen all those beautiful colors stealing over the sky.  He didn't know why he was still having such an extreme reaction to the other man.  He'd managed to work well enough with Fogg yesterday when it was necessary, after all, following Fogg's lead, taking his orders.  Hadn't he?

            Was that why he was angry?  Because he _could_ get over his anger and fear, and forgive the older man?  Because, for certain tiny moments, he'd felt some sympathy for Fogg, had actually felt he understood something of what Fogg was going through?

            If only he were a painter, he would have been utterly delighted with this angle, with the light coming down in golden shafts through that cloud…

            He heard footsteps slowly and deliberately heading his way, and he closed his eyes, preparing himself and abandoning his sunrise.  "You can't go on hating me forever, Verne," Fogg said, coming to a halt next to the student and looking at the sunrise thoughtfully.  "It will wear you down.  Burn you out.  Believe me, I know."

            Jules glanced at the older man quickly and surreptitiously.  The Englishman looked his usual dapper self in pristine suit, not a hair out of place, but there was a sort of haggardness in those green eyes.  "I don't hate you," Jules told him, remembering a gun pointed at his forehead as he failed miserably at taking in what had happened to him, remembering the unconcealed relief on Fogg's face when he found Jules was still alive in the Mole.  "I dislike you intensely.  And I feel I have every right to do so."

            A smile flickered across Fogg's lined face.  "Yes, I suppose you do," he told the writer with a tinge of humor in his voice.  Jules gritted his teeth.  He intensely disliked that patronizing tone as well.  "You still don't understand, Verne."

            "No," Jules replied frigidly.  "And I don't suppose I ever will, if no one will explain."  He turned on his heel, unwilling to stay in the other man's presence any longer, and headed for the door that would lead back into the airship.

            "Wait, Verne," Fogg's voice called him back, and Jules unwillingly turned back and stood impatiently.

            Phileas walked up to him, looking him directly in the eye.  Jules determinedly held his stance and the other man's gaze.  "I had to follow that course of action, Verne," the Englishman said quietly.  "If Rebecca had truly been compromised, I would have had to kill her."  He paused.  "No matter how much it would have hurt."

            "Why?"  Jules asked in an uncompromising tone of voice.

            "She is an agent for Her Majesty's Secret Service.  She knows things, Jules.  She is privy to a great many secrets that could do untold damage if they fell into the wrong hands.  Don't you see?  Even if I don't belong to the Service anymore, I still have my own duty that I must follow."

            Jules's jaw clenched.  "Duty.  Duty.  You might have a duty, _Fogg_, but that doesn't mean your only option is murder.  You didn't even consider the possibility that Rebecca was only playing a part.  You automatically assumed the worst and weren't even going to give her a chance.  Don't you also have a _duty_ to protect your cousin?"

            Fogg scowled; Jules knew he'd touched a nerve with that, but it seemed to mean more than he could explain with what little knowledge he had of the gentleman.  "Swift decision was called for—"

            "Not necessarily!  You couldn't carry out your original plan, could you?  You were delayed, and because of that, you found out the truth.  And nothing was really changed in the end, was it?  The mission was still concluded successfully.  And Rebecca was saved."

            "Just barely."

            "But she was _saved_!  Why can't you admit for once that you were _wrong?!_"  Jules's voice raised to an almost hysterical shout, and he stepped back quickly, breathing hard, attempting to regain control.

            "This isn't about Rebecca, is it, Verne?"  Fogg's voice was cool, thoughtful, grating on Jules's already shattered nerves.  "This is about what I did to you."

            "No," Jules snapped back, then immediately added, "Yes, perhaps, in part.  But not completely.  You were wrong about Rebecca as well."  He turned away again; he couldn't stay here any longer.

            "Jules," Phileas snagged Jules's coat sleeve and turned the smaller man back toward him, the change in his tone and attitude abrupt.  "Jules, I'm sorry."

            "Really."  Jules refused to meet his eye.

            "Dammit, man, I'm apologizing!  I admit it.  I was wrong.  I was utterly and completely wrong about you at first.  And yes, I was wrong about Rebecca as well.  I.  Am.  Sorry."

            Jules could hear the effort it was costing the arrogant gentleman to say those words, to apologize and admit he had been mistaken.  Jules admitted to himself he had been waiting to hear those words, had been fully expecting them, knew that he deserved them.

            But it simply wasn't enough.

            "Fine," Jules said and tore out of Fogg's grasp.  "Thank you for the apology.  Would you please ask Passepartout to set a course for Paris?  I'd like to go home."

            And with that, he went inside, slamming the door behind him.

***

            Phileas's shoulders slumped.

            There was almost nothing more, in the entire world, which he hated than having to admit that he had been wrong.  He usually managed to avoid it with a consummate skill that could quite often turn Rebecca's fury into laughter because he could be so devious about it.

            And admitting it this time had done nothing to change the boy's mind.

            Why was Jules Verne so important?  Fogg wasn't entirely sure, but there was something about the lad that made him seemed destined for greatness.  And there was something about him that made Phileas feel...hopeful.

            It wasn't often Fogg gave in to hope.

            And besides...strange as it seemed even to himself, he wanted Verne to be his friend.  The student had some quite incomprehensible ideas--he was French, after all--but it was refreshing to have someone to argue with.  Someone else, whose arguments he couldn't always predict, whose mind seemed almost quicker than his own, at least in some areas.

            Damn.  Damn damn damn.  Phileas couldn't shake the feeling that there was no way he could solve this.

            He adjusted his coat and cravat, fiddled with his cufflinks, and at last felt ready to go back into the airship, descending the staircase to the main deck.  He would find Passepartout and ask the servant to make breakfast.  And he would tell him to take them to Paris before they went back to London.

            He found Rebecca first.  She was standing at the observation window, in front of the ship's controls, dressed in a surprisingly simple frock, her hair also very simply dressed.  He took a moment to look at her before announcing his presence.

            "Verne wants to go home," he said, walking up to join her at the window.  "We should let him go."

            Rebecca looked up into her cousin's face, a troubled cast to her blue eyes and pursed lips.  "I still don't think that's wise, Phil," she said.

            "Oh, Rebecca," he answered, "so long as the idiot doesn't go drunkenly wandering around the streets of Paris at night by himself, I'm sure he'll be fine.  We can't keep him here against his will.  You're being entirely overprotective."

            "You're both acting like idiots," she shot back.  "And it's extremely irritating."

            Fogg glared at her, betrayed.  She returned the gaze unrepentantly.  "And your sex always pretends to be the practical ones," she added entirely unfairly.

            "I apologized to him.  He refused to accept it."

            "Oh."  Rebecca paused to consider her cousin's coldly given statement and immediately dropped her relentless teasing.  "Ah."  Her lips tightened, and she rested a light, gentle hand on top of Fogg's, clenching the railing, for an instant.  "I'm sorry, Phil.  He's as stubborn as you are, it seems."

            "Which isn't very useful, is it?" Fogg managed to find a slightly amused tone.  Rebecca rewarded him with a smile.

            "I'll talk with him," she promised.  "And if that doesn't work, I'll put Passepartout onto him."

            Fogg shook his head.  "Why are we doing this, Rebecca?"

            Rebecca looked up at him candidly.  "Because he's Jules Verne.  Which, perhaps, at the moment doesn't mean very much to the world...but the world doesn't know him yet."

            Fogg paused for a moment in thought, then laughed slightly.  Sometimes, his cousin had a way with words that was...ineffable.  "You're right, of course, Rebecca."

            She grinned.  "As always."  With that, she left to go upstairs.

***

            He was where she fully expected him to be, in the lab, staring deeply into one of those fiddly glass tubes that could seriously aggravate Rebecca at times.  She knocked politely before entering the room through the already opened door.

            He glanced back at her and half-smiled.  "Hello, Rebecca," he said, sliding off his stool.  "How are you?" he added, with a frown of concern replacing what had been a half-hearted smile at best in the first place.

            "I'm fine," she said, "which is more than can be said for Phileas."

            "Oh."

            Rebecca sighed.  "I really am getting tired of playing peacemaker between the two of you," she said frankly.

            "You don't have to anymore," Jules told her shortly.  "I'm going back to Paris.  Didn't Fogg tell you?"

            "Yes, he did," she shot back, "before he also told me that he apologized to you."

            Jules looked up and held her gaze.  "And you think that means something?"

            Rebecca's eyes widened in surprise, and then they flashed in anger.  "Of course it does," she snapped, and she saw Verne jerk back slightly in his own surprise.  "He is a gentleman, Jules.  He does not make an apology lightly.  Phileas especially detests having to do it.  The fact that he did most assuredly means something."  She paced away from him, regaining her temper, then turned back, facing him from a greater distance.  It seemed safer.  He was staring into nothing deeply, as if nothing were the most interesting thing he'd ever stared into before.  It wasn't fair of her to snap at him.  He was confused, she knew that.  And now she was just going to have to confuse him more, in order to make him see.  "If we take you back to Paris, Jules, you do realize you will have to be more careful now, don't you?"

            "What?" he switched his frown to her, resting a hand on the lab table, as if to reassure himself of its solidity, its reality.

            "They--whoever they are--are not going to give up on you," she continued.  "Look at what's already happened to you.  They stole your sketches, Jules.  They tried to steal you.  They won't stop there."

            He shook his head in denial.  "That's stupid," he said, not paying attention to the words he spoke, "why would anyone want--"

            "Look at what they did with just a single, incomplete set of your drawings."

            Jules stopped, staring down at the table as if hypnotized by the grain of the wood, perhaps thinking of the English courier who had been stabbed by the Mole, perhaps thinking of the woman who had held him captive in his own invention.  Rebecca waited painfully, hating this moment of realization for him.  They were stripping away his innocence more and more, the more time he spent with them, but it was out of their hands now.  It couldn't be stopped.  He needed them, even if he hadn't realized that much yet, even if he didn't want to admit to it.  And they needed him.  That mind of his could definitely get them out of more scrapes, she was certain.  And there was no way in hell any of them--Jules included; it was as much in his nature as theirs, even if he didn't want to admit that either at the moment--would stop getting into scrapes.

            "I won't draw anymore," he said quietly, as if talking to himself.  Rebecca paid attention nonetheless.  "I'll, I'll stop writing.  I'll burn my notebook.  I...not again.  I just want to be left alone.  I'll--"

            "Jules!"  He snapped his head up to stare at her, as if he'd forgotten she was in the room with him.  She swept toward him, grabbing his hand.  "Don't be an idiot," she said brusquely, not caring that she sounded exactly like her cousin.  It just couldn't be helped sometimes.  "You will not give up your writing or your drawing.  You can't let them do that to you, don't you see?  You can't give in just to escape.  That's the coward's way out.  And I know for a fact that you are no coward." She took a deep breath.  "We don't want to lose you, Jules.  Any part of you."

            He pulled back from her, his hand slipping out of hers.  She didn't try to catch him back; she knew it was much too soon for that.  He wasn't ready; he didn't trust her enough yet.  "You—you don't have the right to lose me," he said carefully.

            "Oh Jules," she sighed in exasperation, trying to hold back her laughter, a side effect of some release of tension inside her.  "If it weren't for you, I don't think any of us would have gotten away from the vampires, let alone stopped A-the duke's mission."  She barely stumbled at all; Verne certainly didn't notice the fumble.

            "What do you mean?" he frowned.

            She should be worried about him; he was being remarkably obtuse.  "You're the one who figured out what was in the duke's statue.  You're the one who took that contraption and used it on the duke's carriage.  You're the one who found the disguises that allowed you and Phileas to get away.  If you hadn't done all that, Passepartout would undoubtedly have died at the hands of that disgusting-sounding innkeeper, I would have had to find my own way, and you and Phileas...well.  I don't know what would have happened to you two, though I'm sure Phileas would have thought of something if you hadn't."  She stepped closer to him again but didn't attempt to touch him.  "You did all that, Jules."

            "But if it wasn't for Fogg finding the statues in the first place, and you pretending to be on the duke's side and finding the secret entrance, and Passepartout actually getting to the _Aurora_\--"

            "Exactly.  Team effort.  Yes, we Foggs like to be lone players, but even we have to admit that we can't do everything by ourselves."  She smiled at him.  "Thank you."

            He paused, then smiled wryly back.  "Thank _you_."

            She sobered.  "Don't go back to Paris yet," she said quietly.  Her tone could never be mistaken for pleading.  It sounded more like a gentle command.  "And if you must, don't lose touch with us.  We're too good a team, you see.  And none of us would like to see anything happen to you."

            "Well, I wouldn't like to see anything happen to you," he replied hesitantly.  It sounded and looked as if he hesitated from embarrassment, not because the words were forced out of him for politeness' sake.  Until the next words he spoke, that is.  "...Any of you."

            Rebecca looked up into his face at that, but for once she couldn't read his expression.  "He's trying, Jules," she said.  "Don't you think you could try too?"

            He nodded a little, releasing a deep breath.  "I'd still like to go back to Paris," he said.  "I should.  But...leave me an address at which I can contact you.  When you're in Paris again..."

            She took his hand again and squeezed it.  "Yes.  Or if you're in London."

            He smiled wryly at that.  "I don't think that's likely to happen, Rebecca."

            She laughed, one of her deep, bewitching laughs.  "Perhaps not.  But you never can tell."

***

            Rebecca went downstairs again soon after that, to get breakfast--she'd said she was ravenous--but Jules remained on the upper level of the ship, lurking.  He knew Fogg would have to come up eventually.  He wanted to speak to the older man alone.

            The Englishman came up the stairs sooner than he expected--but perhaps he _should_ have expected that.  Rebecca had probably told her cousin what had transpired, and Fogg had probably had the same idea as Jules.  For once, Jules didn't mind the possibility that he could think like Phileas Fogg.

            "Verne, there you are," Fogg was acting as if the earlier conversation on the outside deck hadn't happened, but Jules knew for certain that Fogg was still thinking about it.  Jules felt a little ashamed about losing control like that, but he'd needed to say those things.  "I was wondering if I could have a word with you?"

            "I was wondering the same thing," Jules answered.

            "Shall we go to my room?  More privacy."

            Jules nodded and followed the other man down the hall.  Jules stood just in the door while Fogg paced a moment or two the narrow confines of the room.

            Jules swallowed.  "I'm...sorry...for my earlier behavior," he said with deliberate care over each word.  It really wasn't any easier for him to say these words than it had been for Phileas.  "I do accept your apology."

            Fogg looked up that, his expression unfathomable.  "Thank you," he said in the most impassive tone Jules had ever heard a human being use.

            "But you must admit, I had good reason for reacting the way I did," Jules went on immediately.

            "I do," Fogg agreed.  "I did then, if you'll recall."

            Jules winced.  "Stop making me feel guilty," he snapped.  "You should be the one who feels guilty."

            "I do," Fogg answered simply.  "I've made many mistakes in my life, Verne, and that was probably one of the worst.  But only one of them.  And it won't be the last."  He paused.  "We are none of us infallible, Verne.  Not even you."

            Jules studied the older man, considering his words.  There it was again.  That regret, that haunting sadness.  Those were the moments he sympathised with the Englishman, when he felt he could almost like him.  He was so complex.  And no matter what Rebecca said, if it hadn't been for Fogg, Jules knew for a fact he wouldn't have gotten away from that castle.

            He _could_...trust...Fogg.  The thought cost him a great deal of effort.  But after all the previous false starts...perhaps this was a real one.  And it hadn't been all bad.  Yes, there'd been vampires, and some rather sticky moments when he thought he could murder Fogg himself, but there'd actually been a moment or two buried in there somewhere when he'd been enjoying himself.  And there was something very--satisfying--about knowing that he'd done that.  He hadn't just been a law student at the Sorbonne; he'd done something exciting and secret in his life.  He'd changed something, helped save a good deal of the world.  And no matter what he'd said earlier about giving up on writing and drawing, he knew he couldn't do it, anymore than he could stop himself opening his big mouth and getting in trouble for his ideas and views.

            "Oh yes, Verne," Fogg looked up, changing the subject and bringing Jules out of his thoughts.  "I wanted to thank you.  You said you would do what you had to do, when I talked to you before this mission began...and you did.  Very good, man."

            Jules's mouth quirked up in a smile.  Perhaps Fogg could read minds?  He stepped forward and held out his hand.  "I'll see you in Paris in the future, no doubt," he said, quite composedly.  His mind was suddenly and remarkably clear.

            Fogg paused, looking down at the hand being proffered to him, then put out his own and firmly shook Jules's hand.  He looked up, a rogue smile crossing his face, and again Jules caught a glimpse of that other side of the Englishman.  "And if you ever feel an urge to get away from dreary old Paris," the older man said lightly, "I'm sure we could find room for you on the _Aurora_."

            Jules laughed before he could catch himself.  "Thank you," he said after a short pause, and then after a longer pause that threatened to become entirely too awkward, he slipped out of the room and headed downstairs to grab a bite of breakfast before gathering his few possessions in preparation for returning to his garret.  It would be good to go home again, and hopefully find his old, familiar routine again.  Write some plays at three in the morning, accidentally miss some classes and draw through some other ones, get drunk with his friends.  He needed some distance.  He knew not everything was resolved yet, and he knew that when he did meet Phileas again—which he no doubt would—there would probably be more fighting between them.  It couldn't be helped, really, they were such different people.  But Jules was willing to handle that when he came to it.

            He didn't know what exactly he'd just gotten himself into…but it would no doubt prove interesting.

            And he could handle interesting.

           


End file.
